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List:       kde-accessibility
Subject:    [Kde-accessibility] KOffice 1.4.1 Accessibility Assessment
From:       Gary Cramblitt <garycramblitt () comcast ! net>
Date:       2005-11-17 2:07:21
Message-ID: 200511162107.21875.garycramblitt () comcast ! net
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I have completed an accessibility self-assessment for KOffice version 1.4.1.  You may \
view the assessment by downloading one of the following files: \
http://accessibility.kde.org/reports/koffice-1.4.1-assessment.sxw  (oo.org \
v1)http://accessibility.kde.org/reports/koffice-1.4.1-assessment.odt   \
(ODF)http://accessibility.kde.org/reports/koffice-1.4.1-assessment.pdf  (PDF) The \
assessment has been coordinated with the KOffice development team and includes notes \
about fixes in the upcoming 1.5 release (early 2006). Comments, corrections, etc. \
welcome.  In a couple of days, barring major changes or objections, I intend to \
publish it on the KDE Accessibility website at http://accessibility.kde.org/reports/
The reasons for the assessment are:
  1.  The Massachusetts Commission for the Blind requested accessibility information \
concerning software that supports the Open Document Format (ODF), i.e., KOffice.  \
(See http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-accessibility&m=112653249424930&w=2)  2.  It needed \
to be done. I expected blind access to be poor, since KDE does not have a screen \
reader, but the results for low-sighted and motor impaired users were surprisingly \
disappointing.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that the KOffice devs have \
been very supportive and many (but not all) of the problems will be fixed in 1.5. \
I've reached the following conclusions:  1.  Some of the problems are fundamental to \
Qt3 and kdelibs3.  QSplitter, QDockWindow, and QToolbar, for instance, are 3 problem \
areas.  2.  We need to get to Qt4/kdelibs4 as soon as possible.  But there will still \
be many issues to address.  Accessibility won't happen automagically.  3.  We need to \
do this sort of thing more often and hold developers feet to the fire.  Many of these \
problems are easy to fix if caught early.  Others are not so easy and will need \
changes to core functionality to fix properly.  Some are basic design flaws, such as \
providing functions that can only be performed using a mouse.  4.  The timing of this \
assessment is really bad because KDE 3.5 is in freeze and KDE4 is a long way off.  \
Had this assessment been done 6 or 9 months ago, we probably could have solved most \
of the problems (except for blind access) by making needed changes to kdelibs3. If \
anyone wants to do similar assessments for other KDE applications, please do so and \
send them to me.  They are not hard to do, and you don't have to be a programmer to \
do them. Regards-- Gary Cramblitt (aka PhantomsDad)KDE Text-to-Speech \
Maintainerhttp://accessibility.kde.org/developer/kttsd/index.php_______________________________________________kde-accessibility \
mailing listkde-accessibility@kde.orghttps://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-accessibility



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