Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Question About Freedom Scientific Scripting (self.Blind)
submitted by mr_techy616
Hi,
I'm in the field of technology instruction for people who are visually impaired and blind. I have a lot of experience with JAWS and ZoomText. I also have a coding background and would like to get started with scripting. Are there any resources that anyone in this subreddit knows about?
Thanks in advance.
Mike Z., $1
I'm in the field of technology instruction for people who are visually impaired and blind. I have a lot of experience with JAWS and ZoomText. I also have a coding background and would like to get started with scripting. Are there any resources that anyone in this subreddit knows about?
Thanks in advance.
Mike Z., $1
retrolental_morose 3 points 3y ago
FS provide a "Basics of Scripting" manual with a complete function reference, and the majority of scripts included with JAWS are also available with their source code, so you can look at that.
capncrisco 2 points 3y ago
NVDA is a screen reader written in python and open source. Lots to dig into and contribute.
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda
mr_techy616 [OP] 1 points 3y ago
I'm familiar with NVDA. The agency that I work for also teaches our clients if it's a better fit for them. I haven't modified any code for it yet. What's interesting though is that when I say "NVDA" to a person outside the visually impaired community they're always like "wait, isn't that a graphics card??" Then I have to explain to them what exactly it, and a screen reader, is.
bradley22 1 points 3y ago
I think they’re thinking of NVDIA?
szaez 1 points 3y ago
If you fix how any of these things handle tagged PDFs, message me immediately.
CloudyBeep 0 points 3y ago
Tagged PDFs should be accessible. If they're not reading correctly, it's probably an issue with your PDF than with the screen reader, unless you can provide an example.
szaez 2 points 3y ago
I wish that were true. I've made enough PDF/UA docs to know this isn't the case.
I mean, try NVDA with any nested list and try to figure out which list level you are in, even if you've used the correct ListNumbering attribute. Further, neither JAWS nor NVDA honors TOC semantics, and the majority of any tag that isn't a paragraph or heading is often announced programmatically as just another paragraph.
Don't get me wrong, some of this is often the fault of how the UA exposes accessibility to the DOM, but the majority of issues are about the lackluster effort by AT to resolve issues with the readers lack of support instead of just fixing what the company's decide is basic human error.
Let's face reality here: Support for PDFs by AT is far behind what it should be. There's no excuse for the major players, since the material for doing so has been available for free since 2008. I'm not even talking about the new PDF 2.0.
I mean, try NVDA with any nested list and try to figure out which list level you are in, even if you've used the correct ListNumbering attribute. Further, neither JAWS nor NVDA honors TOC semantics, and the majority of any tag that isn't a paragraph or heading is often announced programmatically as just another paragraph.
Don't get me wrong, some of this is often the fault of how the UA exposes accessibility to the DOM, but the majority of issues are about the lackluster effort by AT to resolve issues with the readers lack of support instead of just fixing what the company's decide is basic human error.
Let's face reality here: Support for PDFs by AT is far behind what it should be. There's no excuse for the major players, since the material for doing so has been available for free since 2008. I'm not even talking about the new PDF 2.0.
CloudyBeep 2 points 3y ago
I've heard the argument from AT companies that "PDF is dying, so it's not worth investing time with improving compatibility", but I really don't see it dying for a long time yet.
szaez 2 points 3y ago
Lol I've been told PDF has been dying since 2009, and everyone was certain of it. Most of my designer friends are that medicine and got out quickly. I was dumb, but some how it paid off because it turned out to be a gold mine.
It's never going away, because it's so easy to make a PDF. Shit, it's easier to make one than it is to make a Word doc or web page. I only wish I became an expert in something else that others actually cared about.
It's never going away, because it's so easy to make a PDF. Shit, it's easier to make one than it is to make a Word doc or web page. I only wish I became an expert in something else that others actually cared about.
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