[Psi-Devel] Psi for the blind?

[Jesse Thompson]

textshell-I1QKlO at neutronstar.dyndns.org wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 09:35:03AM -0600, Jesse Thompson wrote:
>> Is Psi designed to be accessible for blind people?  As a university,
>> we're required to comply with Section 508 <http://www.section508.gov/>
>>
> 
> Psi's accessibility mostly depends on Qt (the software package that we use
> for cross platform compatible user interface). Googling a bit Qt 4.x (which
> Psi uses) does support assistive tools on windows via Microsoft's
> Accessibility API (MSAA). If you tested with a tool that does support MSAA
> we need to further investigate is the is something other that we have to
> do.
> If the basic communication with the AT works we can think about tweaking
> things to be more AT friendly. I guess the chat log control might need a
> bit of tweaking for example.

I met with one of our blind students and watched as she tried to use
Psi.  She's using JAWS 9 on Windows XP, which supports MSAA.  We have a
site license for JAWS, so that is what our other students use as well.

The screen reader is unable to read essentially everything on the
screen.  The only thing it could read was the window title and the
content of the "Tips" window.  It could identify some images (I think it
was the images in the roster, but it was impossible to tell) but the
images didn't have anything describing what they were.  I think you just
need to add some sort of "alt" text attribute to the buttons, images,
menus and text windows.

Keyboard navigation in the dialogs and menus appears to work.  She could
not figure out keyboard navigation through the roster.

The concept of notifying of new messages might be troublesome.  Aside
from the initial audible alert, it doesn't do any subsequent audible
notifications.  The client gives plenty of visual notifications, but
that doesn't help when you can't see.

In summary,  I think that Psi is really close to being accessible.  I
hope this information helps improve the client!

Jesse

P.S. now I have to go explain to them why they can't use Windows Live
Messenger (which is apparently the most accessible of the proprietary
services) with XMPP :)
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