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How to make Sonic Pi more user-friendly for visually impaired / blind users? #962

Closed hzulla closed 2 years ago

hzulla commented 8 years ago

We're looking for users who are visually impaired / blind. Please comment and discuss here.

Please let the developers of Sonic Pi know how you're using your computer (hardware and software tools, e.g. screen readers) and how Sonic Pi works on your setup. What works, what doesn't work well?

Can you tell us about other open source software that works well for you and where the developers can learn a few tricks to improve Sonic Pi's accessibility?

Thanks & welcome!

ogomez92 commented 8 years ago

We need to somehow replace the scintilla editor or enable its accessibility settings. I dont have experience with qt development but maybe someone else can fix this, it's really not that complicated.. It's just the scintilla editor that is causing problems. :)

yaxu commented 8 years ago

After a bit of googling I found that openscad seems to use qscintilla and have made it accessible in version 2014.03 for screenreaders. I found one example: https://github.com/openscad/openscad/pull/674

hzulla commented 8 years ago

@ogomez92 could you nevertheless please describe the system you're using?

hzulla commented 8 years ago

Are you able to build Sonic Pi from source, so that you can test accessibility patches on a development branch?

ogomez92 commented 8 years ago

Not really, how do I go about doing that?

hzulla commented 8 years ago

What operating system and what accessibility enhancements for it are you using?

ogomez92 commented 8 years ago

windows, NVDA. though the improvements are the same for all major screen readers. Oh and I also will be using a mac soon

hzulla commented 8 years ago

@yaxu nice find. But they removed it again here: https://github.com/openscad/openscad/commit/ba8446e8bfbf770926a13b2d312187077adcb368 as current Qt is supposed to ship with screen reader support by default.

I tried it with my current Ubuntu build using Qt 5.4.2 and the orca screen reader, but that wouldn't work, no speech output from that Sonic Pi build. Then again, I'm not familiar enough with Orca...

hzulla commented 8 years ago

(Well, what we really need is a developer who knows about both Qt and its accessibility features...)

ogomez92 commented 8 years ago

I don't think it's qt, qt is fine, we need a replacement for scintilla, or a command line setting to replace the edit control for a non scintilla based thing.

hzulla commented 8 years ago

Afaik, Qscintilla only uses Qt widgets and we need to activate the accessibility settings of Qt accordingly so that Qscintilla uses them automatically.

indiejane commented 8 years ago

I am working with a student and, as we can't find a screenreader that works with the RPi, he accesses it over ssh using Putty with the NVDA screenreader so if Sonic Pi could be accessed directly via the command line, that would be useful, although sonic-pi-cli is a step in the right direction. I've tried using the windows version of Sonic Pi with the JAWS screenreader and the Mac version with Voiceover. The main problem was that neither set-up read the content of the work area in the GUI.

hzulla commented 8 years ago

I tried using Orca on Xubuntu and found it difficult to run. It uses Pulseaudio which gets blocked once jackd is started by Sonic Pi's supercollider.

While it's possible to get all running together, it's another hurdle to pass. Also, too, no tts output from the Sonic Pi Window in that setup, so something is missing in SP.

It would be worth finding a good working Qt application that works with a screen reader on Linux to learn from its source. Do you know any?

ogomez92 commented 8 years ago

No..... using the cli interface is a step backward. If everyone else can use the gui, why can't we? And don't even bother with orca... It's probably not going to work. I'd focus on windowsmac first.

hzulla commented 8 years ago

@ogomez92 - I'm on Linux and RPi is Sonic Pi's primary development target. I'd want to improve the accessibility situation for all three OS - Win / Mac / Linux.

jscholes commented 8 years ago

I'm using Windows 7 with NVDA as my screen reader. I don't mind how I get code into Sonic Pi, whether it's via a CLI interface or using the GUI. But at the moment neither is really an option.

As has been mentioned, the main problem is with the Scintilla-based editor, which can't even be focussed from the keyboard. Tab traversal doesn't work for the other controls either, but there's not much point going into reams of detail about that when the core of the product isn't usable.

I also tried the work of a couple of other developers to implement Sonic Pi control via OSC, including a Ruby gem and some Erlang code, as well as a Python-based OSC client. But none of these seem to work on Windows. So I find myself completely locked out.

@ogomez92 pointed out, quite rightly so, that accessibility on Linux is not a good quantifier for the level of screen reader access provided by an application in general. Blind users of Linux are definitely in the minority, and I would go as far as to argue that if you focus on Linux accessibility support first and forrmost, you will be wasting your time. Not least because finding blind users to test your implementation will be a challenge.

hzulla commented 8 years ago

A couple of things to note.

Sonic Pi is cross-platform. None of the platforms - Win, OS X, Linux - are second class citizens. Sonic Pi's GUI is using Qt, which is cross-platform. Qt has accessibility features, which are also cross-platform, but most likely we're not using them right yet. So if we fix something on one platform, we're most likely fixing it on all.

I'm not focusing to fix accessibility on Linux, it's just that I'm developing on Linux and as the starter of this thread, that's where I'm testing this. I'm not visually impaired and therefore the correct setup of a computer for that user group is very new to me. Also I'm told that there is fairly large user base of visually impaired Linux users, so I wouldn't scoff at those.

QScintilla is a drop-in editor widget for use by Qt applications. I'm still pretty sure that it's not QScintilla's fault that accessibility doesn't work in Sonic Pi, but that we just don't setup Qt accessibility correctly in Sonic Pi's Qt configuration yet. The fact that screen reading fails for everything in Sonic Pi and not just for the editor is a strong sign for this.

What we need for Sonic Pi is developers who are familiar with the accessibility features of Qt (I'm not, but willing to learn) or a pointer to other Qt-based applications that are friendly to visually impaired users, so that we can learn from their code.

That said, we definitely do want to make Sonic Pi more friendly to visually impaired users, we're just lacking the manpower and/or experience with this particular challenge yet.

alpha2013 commented 8 years ago

Hi! I'm a linux blind user about 4 years and I consider that blinux blind users need to be support and it's not a reason because we are few. Sonicpi need to be accessible. Now it's true that qt as accessibility features but they have some work to do because the accessibility features from qt is not perfect far of that. Now for scintilla it's true that scintilla gtk or qt is not accessible linux or not scintilla is effectively a problem.

hzulla commented 8 years ago

@alpha2013 thanks for commenting. Could you please describe your computer setup and the tools you use to make it accessible? I'd love to understand what you do as a blind user so that I can have a similar setup to test with during development.

alpha2013 commented 8 years ago

is this possible to have a version of sonicpi for linux running on a pc? I'm a ubuntu user with orca screen reader and I want to build a video game console based on a raspberypi and this console will use sounds only no images it will be a game console for blind or someone who want to play with his or her ears.

Le 2016-04-09 16:03, Hanno Zulla a écrit :

@alpha2013 https://github.com/alpha2013 thanks for commenting. Could you please describe your computer setup and the tools you use to make it accessible? I'd love to understand what you do as a blind user so that I can have a similar setup to test with during development.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-207845733

hzulla commented 8 years ago

@alpha2013 Yes. You can run Sonic Pi on desktop Linux. However, we are aware that it isn't as accessible to blind users as we want it to be. Also, I don't know how blind Linux users use their computers, so I have no idea how to test and develop for better accessibility.

Sonic Pi is developed for Windows, OS X and Linux. While we focus on Raspbian with our Linux development, there are binaries for Debian and Ubuntu as well.

ogomez92 commented 8 years ago

I think they just use orca on a gnome desktop :) never used linux myself but I do use windows with NVDA and I've used a mac.

On 4/9/16, Hanno Zulla notifications@github.com wrote:

@alpha2013 Yes. You can run Sonic Pi on desktop Linux. However, we are aware that it isn't as accessible to blind users as we want it to be. Also, I don't know how blind Linux users use their computers, so I have no idea how to test and develop for better accessibility.

Sonic Pi is developed for Windows, OS X and Linux. While we focus on Raspbian with our Linux development, there are binaries for Debian and Ubuntu as well.

You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-207848187

alpha2013 commented 8 years ago

Can you check the kodi project kodi have a kind of self screen reader to use it perhaps will be able to take that kind of screen reader to use in sonic-pi.

Le 2016-04-10 03:24, ogomez92 a écrit :

I think they just use orca on a gnome desktop :) never used linux myself but I do use windows with NVDA and I've used a mac.

On 4/9/16, Hanno Zulla notifications@github.com wrote:

@alpha2013 Yes. You can run Sonic Pi on desktop Linux. However, we are aware that it isn't as accessible to blind users as we want it to be. Also, I don't know how blind Linux users use their computers, so I have no idea how to test and develop for better accessibility.

Sonic Pi is developed for Windows, OS X and Linux. While we focus on Raspbian with our Linux development, there are binaries for

Debian and Ubuntu as well.

You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-207848187

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-207939311

dumbledad commented 6 years ago

I've got a blind kid and his friend in the lab mid April, ostensibly to show me what they have been doing with Project Torino https://hxd.research.microsoft.com/work/torino.php

I was thinking that if I get time it might be great to get them started on SonicPi. What's the current state-of-play on this? They'd be Windows 10 based. Are we still blocked by QScintilla / Qt or are screen readers and accessibility tools working now?

samaaron commented 6 years ago

@dumbledad as far as I'm aware the situation is unchanged.

However, I did recently read that the latest QScintilla has made some improvements w.r.t. accessibility. However, that will require me figuring out how to rebuild the GUI with the latest Qt and QScintilla on Windows. Unfortunately I'm thrashing around looking for funding again which is burning a lot of my time and energy.

One short term approach would be to get the prototype web interface working again which I assume wouldn't suffer from such problems.

SunderB commented 6 years ago

I don’t have much experience with html and JavaScript development, but I’d like to help get the html interface working as much as I can. 🙂 I hope it helps with accessibility.

Would it be better to get the existing code working or to remake the backend of the html interface?

samaaron commented 6 years ago

@SunderB getting the existing code working should be very possible - it's just basic HTML and ClojureScript :-)

SunderB commented 6 years ago

I’m busy most of next week, but I’ll try and work on it a little the week after.

I’m trying to find where the IP address and port of the sonic pi server are specified. Is this the right place?

ws.cljs:

(defn mk-ws []
  (reset! ws (js/WebSocket. (str "ws://" hostname  ":8001"))))
SunderB commented 6 years ago

Wait, from the name of that it looks like it's the port of the web server that it makes.

SunderB commented 6 years ago

I've made a pull request: https://github.com/samaaron/sonic-pi/pull/1859, I hope this is a good start to getting the HTML interface working. 🙂

atti01 commented 6 years ago

Hello, This is Attila from Germany. I am myself totally visually impaired, and i am very interested in the accessibility of the qt gui of sonic pi. As a hint on how to proced i might refer you to john melas, who developed the motif tools for yamaha motif series synthesizers using the qt framework, or alternatively to björn rasmussen who developed the voice conferencing solution teamtalk, whose qt gui implementation makes big progress on windows in conjunction with the nvda screen reader. Unfortunately i am not a programmer, but this might change due to this nice interdisciplinary approach, sonic pi offers... Hope some more blind folks might chime in, since i posted about sonic pi in a german blind music producers whatsapp group one hour ago. I'll definitely stick to this topic and highly apreciate the developers openness to accessibility Issues. Best Regards, Attila.

samaaron commented 6 years ago

@atti01 Hallo! Wie Gehts?

Getting Sonic Pi working well for visually impaired users is a big focus for me. I'm very much aware that things are a complete mess right now and would love to tackle things.

The way I see it there's a few major issues:

  1. For the Qt GUI, no work has been done on improving accessibility using Qt's standard tools
  2. For the Qt GUI, the text editor component has had no accessibility options. However, looking at the developer logs for the component (qscintilla) it seems this has now been resolved, so I'm looking to get this integrated into a beta as soon as possible.
  3. For the HTML GUI, no work has been done to move this beyond a very basic and unsupported prototype.

I'd like to work on all three issues. I'm pretty confident of knowing how to do 2 and 3, but 1 is still a mystery to me. Ideally we'd have a Qt expert who understands accessibility issues to help us out. However, these people you mention, John and Björn might be great contacts to get advice from. Do you happen to know either of then or have their contact details?

Have you tried the Sonic Pi Qt GUI yet? Do you have a list of things that are immediately a problem that I could look into and try and resolve for a beta release for you to play with? Which platform do you use? Windows or macOS?

bmustill-rose commented 6 years ago

All

I've been giving Phil from Riverbank Computing (the author of QScintilla) some help regarding his accessibility work although I have next to no QT development experience so my input has been more test oriented.

As it currently stands, version 2.10.3 of QScintilla does indeed contain some accessibility related code although my (Windows based) testing suggests that it's broken. In fact, if you attempt to use a program that has adopted 2.10.3 in combination with a screen reader that supports IAccessible2 (NVDA for example) the program in question will start consuming large amounts of CPU & become unresponsive shortly after you start writing something & you will find that you have no choice other than to kill its process.

Baring the above in mind, I'd suggest that the version of QScintilla in use on master be kept at 2.10.2 or similar until the issues have been resolved for a couple of reasons:

I should add that it's been a pleasure working with Phil so far & I'm thrilled that he's showing continued interested in making his component accessible. I'm sure that we'll have accessible QScintilla soon - we're just not quite there yet. I'll comment when I have any updates but in the mean time I'll be happy to answer any accessibility-related questions anyone may have as I'd love to be able to use SP without having to rely on the gem.

bmustill-rose commented 6 years ago

2.10.4 (released earlier today) fixes the above issue.

samaaron commented 6 years ago

@bmustill-rose thanks for letting me know - I was about to ask this exact question :-)

Vindoes commented 6 years ago

@bmustill-rose Does the 2.10.4 update fixes all isues regarding the use of a screenreader like JAWS or NVDA with Sonic Pi? Thank you.

bmustill-rose commented 6 years ago

Definitely not! The 2.10.4 release will in theory make the text area accessible to a screen reader that supports IAccessible2 and nothing more. It does however remove the blocker on figuring out what accessibility issues SP has. Are you looking at this from a user or developer point of view?

Vindoes commented 6 years ago

Too bad! I'm looking at this from a teacher point of view. I'm searching for an application that is accessible for blind children so they also can learn the basics of coding.

yonghuming commented 6 years ago

believe you can do well

mjcheverie commented 6 years ago

@samaaron Hi! I am a teacher of blind students in Los Angeles, and just recently discovered Sonic Pi. I am also an avid user of OpenSCAD in behalf of my students. I am wondering if the new version of QScintilla (2.10.4) has made any difference in the accessibility on the editing window of Sonic Pi to screen readers like NVDA or Voiceover. I have a very talented blind student who is anxious to start using Sonic Pi. Thanks!

mjcheverie commented 6 years ago

@samaaron Hello again! A few days ago I learned about FoxDot, which I am sure you are familiar with. One very attractive feature for blind users is that the coding can be done in a command window. The command window is accessible to screenreaders and refreshable Braille displays, which means that a blind user can code in real time. Is it be possible to do this in Sonic Pi? FoxDot communicates with SuperCollider; I'm wondering if Sonic Pi has that capability. I am very impressed and enjoy very much your commitment to education. This is reflected in your tutorials for Sonic Pi. Unfortunately, FoxDot is a bit more difficult to learn for my students. Your tutorials are excellent! I would very much like my students to be able to use Sonic Pi.

obscurerichard commented 5 years ago

I have a PR that might help a little bit with this (#2170) - it has editor tab switching using meta keys 0 through 9. I made this for myself but it would help with navigating between code windows, which I find really awkward without additional keyboard shortcuts.

krperry commented 3 years ago

I am a blind developer. If you want to be able to fix sonic pi. Here is what your developers need to try.

First put your mouse in the drawer and see how easy the interface is to use without it. Onc eyou have fixed all the focus issues that come up without using the mouse. You will find fixing other problems for accessibility to be much easier. You are at least using a newer QT which has accessibility built in. We can now use sonic-pi with Jaws and NVDA two screen readers but with Narrarator it is a bit of a mess. Narrarator is the screen reader that comes iwith Windows. If you want to try it with a screen reader you can download them. NVDA is free if you search for "Non Visual Desktop NVDA download on google you can get it. Jaws screen reader is available for development use. You just search for Jaws screen reader and download the installer. It will run for 45 minutes before you have to reboot your computer. That will give you a good vision of the problems. Finally Narrarator is on your computer if your a Windows user just press ctrl-microsoft-enter to turn it on and the same to turn it off. That will also help you see some of the problems.

I am able to use sonic-pi totally blind but there are problems iwth focus tracking for example if I make a mistak an error window pops up and that drags the focus to the other window. I actually have to alt tab away from sonic-pi and back to get focus back on the editor. Just because an error window pops up you do not have to set focus to it. As a sighted user you can see it as a blind user I will tab to it and check the error. First though there needs to be focusable widgets that I can tab to.

I am willing to work with someone on zoom and I also can compile sonic-pi if people are willing to build changes for testing.

ethancrawford commented 3 years ago

@krperry - many thanks for your comments, we're absolutely committed to improving Sonic Pi's accessibility with the advice and assistance of people such as yourself. I'm sure Sam (or others of us on the core team) are very happy to have a chat on zoom or something similar to discuss the process.

Just in case you're not already aware, there are indeed keyboard shortcuts to shift focus between most panes of the Sonic Pi GUI - and these can also be triggered via the main menu bar. (Also, to hide the error panel when it pops up, you can press the escape key).

Having said all that, again, we're always keen to hear about any accessibility improvements that you feel are still needed - so it would be great to discuss it with you in more detail soon!

mjcheverie commented 3 years ago

Hi Ken:

Thanks for including me in this email chain. I have been playing around with Sonic Pi, and have been very impressed. I've shared it with some of my students. There are keyboard shortcuts that I have been gradually learning.

I am particularly interested in the resolution of the accessibility issues with QT. If you recall, we ran into some of the same problems with OpenSCAD when we were trying to help you do 3D printing. The editing window on OpenSCAD was not at all accessible, and the issue was QT, as I recall. I'm wondering if the folks at Sonic Pi might have any insight into this.

Of course, I need to remind you, painfully, that I am just a high school teacher, and am not a developer. My coding skills are amateur, at best.

In the meantime, I hope you have been well! My best wishes are with you!

Mike Cheverie

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 6:39 PM krperry @.***> wrote:

I am a blind developer. If you want to be able to fix sonic pi. Here is what your developers need to try.

First put your mouse in the drawer and see how easy the interface is to use without it. Onc eyou have fixed all the focus issues that come up without using the mouse. You will find fixing other problems for accessibility to be much easier. You are at least using a newer QT which has accessibility built in. We can now use sonic-pi with Jaws and NVDA two screen readers but with Narrarator it is a bit of a mess. Narrarator is the screen reader that comes iwith Windows. If you want to try it with a screen reader you can download them. NVDA is free if you search for "Non Visual Desktop NVDA download on google you can get it. Jaws screen reader is available for development use. You just search for Jaws screen reader and download the installer. It will run for 45 minutes before you have to reboot your computer. That will give you a good vision of the problems. Finally Narrarator is on your computer if your a Windows user just press ctrl-microsoft-enter to turn it on and the same to turn it off. That will also help you see some of the problems.

I am able to use sonic-pi totally blind but there are problems iwth focus tracking for example if I make a mistak an error window pops up and that drags the focus to the other window. I actually have to alt tab away from sonic-pi and back to get focus back on the editor. Just because an error window pops up you do not have to set focus to it. As a sighted user you can see it as a blind user I will tab to it and check the error. First though there needs to be focusable widgets that I can tab to.

I am willing to work with someone on zoom and I also can compile sonic-pi if people are willing to build changes for testing.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-811575833, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AC74R3FFOFCGUWSKAKWE2YDTGPFDLANCNFSM4B2UTC3Q .

krperry commented 3 years ago

Excellent. I work for the American Printing House for the blind as a Senior software engineer but I do this stuff on the side. I am currently teaching a student python because of covid they need someone who would work on zoom. At any rate I downloaded sonic-pi to help the student make sound effects and love the program. I am currently also just getting started working with OpenScad which has a QT interface a lot like Sonic-pi and with a lot of the same problems. I used OpenScad 17 months ago when it was much worse but they followed our advice and compiled in the new QT and now more blind people are using it. I have only created a couple 3D things with Openscad but it needs some definitely focus fixes.

I'm sure Sam (or others of us on the core team) are very happy to have a chat on zoom or something similar to discuss the process.

I don’t have a Zoom account my company is Non-profit and all the stuff I do on the side has not made it so I need a multi user account. With that said if you guys send me an invite I think it will be of great benefit to talk through some of the problems.

Just in case you're not already aware, there are indeed keyboard shortcuts to shift focus between most panes of the Sonic Pi GUI - and these can also be triggered via the main menu bar. (Also, to hide the error panel when it pops up, you can press the escape key).

I know about the short cuts but the problem is once the pop up happens the screen reader loses focus. So imagine if the pop up locked your eyes into the position of the error message. And then pressing the key just makes the whole screen go white. That is pretty much how it is working now. I have to alt tab off the app and back to get my screen readers to re-focus on the editor. That is pretty tedious especially since I am just getting started with the Sen text and arguments of the sonic-pi language.

I can go to the file menu then go to view and focus editor and my screen reader will then see it but just hitting control+shift+e does nothing because some how I am still in the editor thus the Screen reader doesn’t get a refocus message. These things can be fixed with accessibility events using QT but I need to know more about how it is working now. I will take a look at the code soon. I just am hacking at it right now to get an idea of the problems before I do that.

Another thing is when I load the software the editor is not set in focus. I suppose for sighted folks the edit screen is right smack in the center and really visible? I don’t know I get some asci things like stars and stuff. Will look into that more after I write this.

The other thing is there should be tab orders between the UI widgets. To get off the editor you should be able to do something like ctrl+shift+tab and ctrl+tab to get forward and back. Then once off a multi-line edit you should be able to tab through the GUI. There are other navigation issues and there are documents out online about how to make keyboard focus work. Most of it is just turning on functions of QT for example making anything that should be able to take focus “Focusable” and then fixing the order of items so it makes since when you tab through them.

Then if you want the system to work really well with Screen readers adding something like an Accessible tab order tree really would improve things.

Something is also wrong with the focus when your editing code. I find that if I try to arrow around a lot in the text it loses focus with the screen reader which is just weird. Also things like block and copy get a little squirrelly with the screen reader.

Note I am a QT newbie but I understand the accessibility features to it. I do .net, WX widgets, old MFC, WFC, and Android mobile platforms so this is just another GUI. The biggest thing was to make QT with something later than4.8 and you guys have done that. Now it’s all clean up.

The other good news is your menus look good and you don’t seem to have the wandering focus issue that OpenScad widgets do so your farther along than they are. Of course you are a music app and not a 3D cad program so your stuff is more accessible to start.

I think when the tab navigation and the editor problems are fixed this app will be as good for the blind as it is for the sited. Not to mention fixing the tab helps so many other disabilities. For example there are a lot of people out there with bad motor skills and that doesn’t work good with mice.

Having said all that, again, we're always keen to hear about any accessibility improvements that you feel are still needed - so it would be great to discuss it with you in more detail soon!

I am also going to show this app to two of my music nerds at work. I am not a music nerd. I received a guitar for Christmas like 15 years ago and I still just play with it. I might have a couple songs I can play but I really am no better than a computer repeating steps. Which is where this program really shines. It actually makes me seem like I know what I am doing even if I have to fight with the UI.

Anyway my work email is:

@. @.>

My personal work email is

@. @.>

I would love to chat with your group after I finish looking through this UI. One of my sound nerds is a blind QA turned project lead so he might have some really good input as well.

Lets set something up. I will leave it in your court.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-811608273 , or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AB5J6YPSFXSR2Y4UCLA7VCDTGPQ4NANCNFSM4B2UTC3Q . https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AB5J6YJUG2ELT7KM4FVTOIDTGPQ4NA5CNFSM4B2UTC32YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOGBQCRUI.gif

krperry commented 3 years ago

Small world. Have you downloaded Openscad lately? Big improvements there and I just compiled the latest. I am working with them now on trying to finish off some of the last bugs over there.

I think you were included because you were watching the ticket I wrote my comment to. Amazing though we connect this way again. I just sent out the video you made with me and Openscad last week to the See3D.org folks. They are trying to work with me to finish OpenScads access.

From: mjcheverie @.> Sent: Thursday, April 1, 2021 12:35 AM To: sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi @.> Cc: krperry @.>; Mention @.> Subject: Re: [sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi] How to make Sonic Pi more user-friendly for visually impaired / blind users? (#962)

Hi Ken:

Thanks for including me in this email chain. I have been playing around with Sonic Pi, and have been very impressed. I've shared it with some of my students. There are keyboard shortcuts that I have been gradually learning.

I am particularly interested in the resolution of the accessibility issues with QT. If you recall, we ran into some of the same problems with OpenSCAD when we were trying to help you do 3D printing. The editing window on OpenSCAD was not at all accessible, and the issue was QT, as I recall. I'm wondering if the folks at Sonic Pi might have any insight into this.

Of course, I need to remind you, painfully, that I am just a high school teacher, and am not a developer. My coding skills are amateur, at best.

In the meantime, I hope you have been well! My best wishes are with you!

Mike Cheverie

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 6:39 PM krperry @. <mailto:@.> > wrote:

I am a blind developer. If you want to be able to fix sonic pi. Here is what your developers need to try.

First put your mouse in the drawer and see how easy the interface is to use without it. Onc eyou have fixed all the focus issues that come up without using the mouse. You will find fixing other problems for accessibility to be much easier. You are at least using a newer QT which has accessibility built in. We can now use sonic-pi with Jaws and NVDA two screen readers but with Narrarator it is a bit of a mess. Narrarator is the screen reader that comes iwith Windows. If you want to try it with a screen reader you can download them. NVDA is free if you search for "Non Visual Desktop NVDA download on google you can get it. Jaws screen reader is available for development use. You just search for Jaws screen reader and download the installer. It will run for 45 minutes before you have to reboot your computer. That will give you a good vision of the problems. Finally Narrarator is on your computer if your a Windows user just press ctrl-microsoft-enter to turn it on and the same to turn it off. That will also help you see some of the problems.

I am able to use sonic-pi totally blind but there are problems iwth focus tracking for example if I make a mistak an error window pops up and that drags the focus to the other window. I actually have to alt tab away from sonic-pi and back to get focus back on the editor. Just because an error window pops up you do not have to set focus to it. As a sighted user you can see it as a blind user I will tab to it and check the error. First though there needs to be focusable widgets that I can tab to.

I am willing to work with someone on zoom and I also can compile sonic-pi if people are willing to build changes for testing.

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xavriley commented 3 years ago

Hi Mike, Ken,

I just wanted to let you know that we've discussed this in the core team chat and we're all keen to work on this but we're all a little bit stretched with other things right now. The plan is to pick this up as soon as we can though - I just wanted to let you know it's on our minds and something that we all want to make progress with.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Sonic Pi in any case! We'll be in touch again soon if that's ok with you.

krperry commented 3 years ago

I am going to download sonic-pi and compile it. You guys do take pull requests right? I mean I might be able to fix some of thes things on my own.

From: Xavier Riley @.> Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 3:21 PM To: sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi @.> Cc: krperry @.>; Mention @.> Subject: Re: [sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi] How to make Sonic Pi more user-friendly for visually impaired / blind users? (#962)

Hi Mike, Ken,

I just wanted to let you know that we've discussed this in the core team chat and we're all keen to work on this but we're all a little bit stretched with other things right now. The plan is to pick this up as soon as we can though - I just wanted to let you know it's on our minds and something that we all want to make progress with.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Sonic Pi in any case! We'll be in touch again soon if that's ok with you.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-812674894 , or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AB5J6YLQ3LFTS5Y4T5WOFDTTGYKLPANCNFSM4B2UTC3Q . https://github.com/notifications/beacon/AB5J6YO5IHJBRVKDLQSOECTTGYKLPA5CNFSM4B2UTC32YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOGBYG6TQ.gif

mjcheverie commented 3 years ago

That is good to hear! Thanks, Ken!

Mike

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 10:08 PM krperry @.***> wrote:

Small world. Have you downloaded Openscad lately? Big improvements there and I just compiled the latest. I am working with them now on trying to finish off some of the last bugs over there.

I think you were included because you were watching the ticket I wrote my comment to. Amazing though we connect this way again. I just sent out the video you made with me and Openscad last week to the See3D.org folks. They are trying to work with me to finish OpenScads access.

From: mjcheverie @.> Sent: Thursday, April 1, 2021 12:35 AM To: sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi @.> Cc: krperry @.>; Mention @.> Subject: Re: [sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi] How to make Sonic Pi more user-friendly for visually impaired / blind users? (#962)

Hi Ken:

Thanks for including me in this email chain. I have been playing around with Sonic Pi, and have been very impressed. I've shared it with some of my students. There are keyboard shortcuts that I have been gradually learning.

I am particularly interested in the resolution of the accessibility issues with QT. If you recall, we ran into some of the same problems with OpenSCAD when we were trying to help you do 3D printing. The editing window on OpenSCAD was not at all accessible, and the issue was QT, as I recall. I'm wondering if the folks at Sonic Pi might have any insight into this.

Of course, I need to remind you, painfully, that I am just a high school teacher, and am not a developer. My coding skills are amateur, at best.

In the meantime, I hope you have been well! My best wishes are with you!

Mike Cheverie

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 6:39 PM krperry @. <mailto:@.>

wrote:

I am a blind developer. If you want to be able to fix sonic pi. Here is what your developers need to try.

First put your mouse in the drawer and see how easy the interface is to use without it. Onc eyou have fixed all the focus issues that come up without using the mouse. You will find fixing other problems for accessibility to be much easier. You are at least using a newer QT which has accessibility built in. We can now use sonic-pi with Jaws and NVDA two screen readers but with Narrarator it is a bit of a mess. Narrarator is the screen reader that comes iwith Windows. If you want to try it with a screen reader you can download them. NVDA is free if you search for "Non Visual Desktop NVDA download on google you can get it. Jaws screen reader is available for development use. You just search for Jaws screen reader and download the installer. It will run for 45 minutes before you have to reboot your computer. That will give you a good vision of the problems. Finally Narrarator is on your computer if your a Windows user just press ctrl-microsoft-enter to turn it on and the same to turn it off. That will also help you see some of the problems.

I am able to use sonic-pi totally blind but there are problems iwth focus tracking for example if I make a mistak an error window pops up and that drags the focus to the other window. I actually have to alt tab away from sonic-pi and back to get focus back on the editor. Just because an error window pops up you do not have to set focus to it. As a sighted user you can see it as a blind user I will tab to it and check the error. First though there needs to be focusable widgets that I can tab to.

I am willing to work with someone on zoom and I also can compile sonic-pi if people are willing to build changes for testing.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub < https://github.com/sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi/issues/962#issuecomment-811575833 , or unsubscribe < https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AC74R3FFOFCGUWSKAKWE2YDTGPFDLANCNFSM4B2UTC3Q

.

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