Re: plugin accessibility
Re: plugin accessibility
- Subject: Re: plugin accessibility
- From: David Bolter <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:06:05 -0400
Hi Christiaan,
On 8/16/09 3:54 PM, Christiaan Hofman wrote:
On Aug 16, 2009, at 9:31 PM, David Bolter wrote:
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for saying this. I certainly apologize if anyone thinks I'm
wasting the list's time but I assure you I have read the
documentation at:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Accessibility/cocoaAXOverview/cocoaAXOverview.html
... and I'm still confused.
best regards,
David
But do you /understand/ it?
Yes, I believe I do. It is not that different conceptually from the a11y
APIs on other platforms which I'm much more familiar with.
And not just that single section, also the rest of the docs and
perhaps a few links. in the guide. You should then know that the
hierarchy consists of UI elements (which are /objects/ like windows,
views, etc). It should be obvious that a "plugin" is not in any way a
UI element, so asking how to insert it in the hierarchy is senseless.
Right, and I didn't mean to imply that is what I want to do here.
Again I say: you're asking the wrong question. The question you could
ask is: "how can a plugin insert an accessible object in the
accessibility hierarchy?" And in fact, the word "plugin" in this
question is completely superfluous, you could just replace it with
"any code".
Yes exactly. I regret using the word "plugin" and all the confusion it
has brought.
The answer should be clear from the docs, which tells you how the
hierarchy is implemented in MacOSX: if you insert a view in the view
hierarchy, it will automatically be part of the accessibility
hierarchy, that's all there is to it.
Yes I've read that and I'm impressed.
After that, it becomes a question on how to implement the
accessibility protocol, which is explained in the various docs.
However, none of this has /anything/ to do with either "Safari" nor
"plugin" in particular. The only thing that may be specific to Safari
plugins is how views coming from a plugin are inserted, but that's a
question about Safari plugins (that you probably know) and not about
accessibility.
Yes exactly. We are understanding each other! It sounds like my
remaining questions belong on another list or with me reading code.
cheers,
David
Christiaan
On 8/16/09 2:49 PM, Daniel Jalkut wrote:
I empathize with being frustrated by questions that seem
"obvious"... I don't know enough about accessibility to judge
whether David's questions are truly abusive of the list's time or not.
But it always feels to me when this kind of blanket "it's obvious if
you read the manual" response overlooks the possibility that
somebody could have read the documentation and still be confused.
It's not as though reading the manual ever solved all of my problems
or disabused me of all my misconceptions.
Impatient outbursts like this might do a good job of discouraging
people from wasting the list's time, but I imagine it will also
scare people off who have read the documentation, are still
confused, but are now too afraid of being ridiculed to ask a question.
When I'm tempted to respond in such a manner, I try to remind myself
that being supremely impatient and dismissive is as unproductive an
activity for a list as being naive and oblivious. Ideally,
representatives of both camps would refrain from posting.
Daniel
On Aug 16, 2009, at 5:30am, Christiaan Hofman wrote:
(sigh) RTFM!
Plugins are not inserted in any hierarchy. If you want to know WHAT
(UI elements) is inserted and HOW your plugin can insert stuff
(make UI) in the hierarchy that's accessible, you RTFM! And if you
did, you'd know that whether it is in Safari.app or Bugaloo.app, or
whether it's inside the app itself or coming from a plugin DOES
NOIT MATTER! So of course the docs won't mention Safari plugins.
You're really looking at it from the wrong point, so you're still
asking the wrong questions. Cocoa accessibility is different from
Mozilla's. First LEARN how Cocoa accessibility is implemented and
then ASK YOURSELF how your code can make use of that.
Christiaan
On Aug 16, 2009, at 4:10 AM, David Bolter wrote:
Hi Christiaan,
I wasn't clear earlier but it is exactly the insertion of plugins
into the heirarchy that I'm currently interested in, and more
specifically the proposal here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Plugins:NativeAccessibility
You've provided me with information that I am still having trouble
finding in these docs -- namely that Safari plugins are not
inserted into the heirarchy, and therefore there probably isn't a
strategy for inserting OOP plugins into the accessible tree.
As browsers move more to muti-process architectures, including
muti-process content, I think it is worthwhile thinking through
the right places to solve the related issues so I'm looking to see
what others are doing. For example, native accessibility
architectures tend to be synchronous, but maybe we want to rethink
that. I don't want to go too off topic here though.
cheers,
David
On 8/15/09 3:00 PM, Christiaan Hofman wrote:
On Aug 15, 2009, at 8:11 PM, David Bolter wrote:
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately I'm particularly interested
in how plugins are inserted into the heirarchy (if they are),
and especially how this is implemented for OOP plugins (probably
wrapping and remoting). I'll investigate.
Plugins are not inserted in the hierarchy. If you'd read these
docs you'd know that saying this doesn't even make sense. The
docs tell you WHAT is inserted and HOW. I advice you not to
return until you've read and understood these docs.
Christiaan
If anyone on this list is has done or is currently implementing
this I'd like to chat. Note: I'll likely be pinging Jonas at
Google soon too; note:
http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/design-documents/accessibility#TOC-Synchronous-IPC-for-Accessibility
cheers,
David
On 8/15/09 1:51 PM, Christiaan Hofman wrote:
On Aug 15, 2009, at 7:40 PM, David Bolter wrote:
Hi Christiaan,
Thanks for your reply. I was hoping this would be a good way
to start a discussion about OOP plugin accessibility but maybe
this list isn't the right place?
I probably didn't look at the right docs... can you point me
to the one with all the answers? :)
cheers,
David
<http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Accessibility/cocoaAXOverview/cocoaAXOverview.html>
explains how accessibility is implemented in Cocoa. From that
it should be clear that "safari" or "plugin" are totally
irrelevant to the discussion. It only matters stuff is inserted
in the hierarchy, which is more a question of what they do then
what they are.
Christiaan
On 8/14/09 5:05 PM, Christiaan Hofman wrote:
On Aug 14, 2009, at 8:37 PM, David Bolter wrote:
Hi all.
Does Safari have any plugin accessibility support?
Yes.
If so, what about for out of process plugins?
cheers,
David
No.
If the answers aren't very useful that's because you're
asking the wrong questions (just a friendly advice, the docs
have all the answers).
Christiaan
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