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Topic: 0.9.5 playlist view accessibility (Read 9240 times) previous topic - next topic
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0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Hello guys,
I am big fan of foobar 2000 due to its simplicity and uncomparable feature set. Also I found it being only one player allowing visually disabled people to use all the core features comfortably without the needs for zilion workarounds.
The developers were even too great that they implemented iaccessible interface for playlist view. This has been perfectly exposing playlist content to microsoft active accessibility up to version 0.9.4.5. Starting with foobar 2000 0.9.5 beta 1 this no longer works. Can iaccessible interface be implemented for this new playlist view please? It's importance is even increasing with making the view more flexible as it can be used at various places E.G. playlist search dialog.
The control I am talking about report its class name as {4B94B650-C2D8-40de-A0AD-E8FADF62D56C}. I understand that coding takes time so I can wait for the implementation it-self to happen. for the time being I would just like to see some response whether this can be done or not.
Another small accessibility issue is that after activating some entries in the main menu focus is returned to the toolbar or parent menu object. I think focussing playlist view would be more appropriate. To reproduce:
1) select an item in the playlist view.
2) press alt or shift+F10 to show up the menu bar.
3) arrow right to the edit menu.
4) by repeatedly pressing down arrow select some item which does not open a dialog (E.G. select all) and hit enter.
The last thing related to accessibility I can think of at the moment is inability to show some popup menus using keyboard only (at least I haven't found the way yet). For example I seem to be unable to remove album list view from the main window.
oh.. I have found some more: in the equalizer window it is not possible to tab to these controls: "Equalizer Enabled", "Zero All" "Auto Level", "Load Preset", "Save Preset". Can these be added into the taborder with tabstop property set?
In the preferences window under the keyboard shortcuts branch it is not possible to tab out of the edit field holding the actual shortcut key. I see it is much more comfortable to be able to press just any key when that control is in the focus but try to think that there might be people who can't take advantage of that little thing called mouse.
P.S. That playlistview accessibility is extremely important to quite large user base I am sure so take proper actions please.

Thanks a lot for all the work

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #1
Regarding IAccessible support in the new list control: I told Peter people would ask about this when he added it. I have also sent him the link to this thread.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #2
frankly I know a lot of people who will miss it once final release comes out. But If my word is not enough I can ask some people to join and post the request. I feel that's the only thing I can do about it. FB2K has gained its popularity among blind users because of its fully accessible playlist editor.
Of course I am willing to test what ever you ask me to. If you are unsure if it's working or not. I have no problems even with crashes while the software is considered beta.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #3
I believe this feature is a must for the final 0.9.5 release.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #4
The problem is being worked on at the moment. Although I can not promise that it will be ready for sure by 0.9.5 final rest assured that the issues are being looked into and the developers will try their best to come up with a solution for this.

This is a feature of fb2k that I personally always found very important myself so be assured that it will not be forgotten about.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #5
Thanks a lot guys, you are great!

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #6
thanks guys. I knew it is due to the fact current version is beta.
Anyway I have now found out that originally the iaccessible interface was being tested in cooperation with foosion so foosion applause to you and thanks a lot.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #7
FB2K is a must for me, so thanks guys. You rock.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #8
Hello,
I found one more thing which is pretty anoying.
Status bar is now fully iconized or owner-drawn or something like that. There are several ways how to break status bar accessibility so I am not going to think about all the possibilities at the point. Perhaps you can tell something about this too.
Here are some short guides on how to expose some common controls. This includes menuitems, listbox and combobox items. Maybe you can figure some way for statusbar too.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #9
Thanks for pointing that out. Considering that we had already solved this in previous versions of the Default User Interface, it should be easy to look up the solution and apply it to the new version. The IAccessible implementation for the new list control is a bit trickier, but Peter still aims to get it into beta 3 at the latest.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #10
Quote
FB2K has gained its popularity amonk blind users because of its fully accessible playlist editor.


I second that. Among other things I also work with blind people and this far the only really good audio solution for blind people to use on PC has been Foobar.

I'm very happy that developers are taking accessibility features in account too. Unfortunately I can't help with beta testing for now because next time I'm working to help setting up media library for blind person is in Jan. 2008 earliest.

I can only hope the best for developers and keep doing great work you do! * thumbs up *

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #11
Thanks for pointing that out. Considering that we had already solved this in previous versions of the Default User Interface, it should be easy to look up the solution and apply it to the new version. The IAccessible implementation for the new list control is a bit trickier, but Peter still aims to get it into beta 3 at the latest.

I just would like to let you know that in foobar 2000 0.9.X up to 0.9.4.5 statusbar is partially accessible. It has a few pannels and only those showing total length and volume are exposed to MSAA. Previously I thought chances are minimal to have it fixed but now when I see you do really care I just got a feeling I should mention it at least.
The development of open-source screen reader called NVDA - no visual desktop access has been started about a year before and now this is growing into very nice and powerfull software.  The guys behind it are all blind and at the point they can't still handle video information at all. Comparing it to other (mostly commercial solutions) this one is trying to get the most of the accessibility apis and other programatical solutions while retrieving information. It's why I feel these things are too important. It's hard to cooperate with other developers but now I feel with you we are very close to it and eventually when you will manage to help we should present foobar 2000 as really working example of fully accessible software and show to the rest of the world that everything is possible without implementing bunch of hacks and workarounds and follow standards where available.
Unfortunatelly we are each on the other side you are providing info and we are retrieving it but I am open to any ideas and am willing to experiment if there are some ideas.
Sorry for going slightly off topic but since I am trying to present more and more ideas related to accessibility I decided to show a bit of background where I am coming from.

Thanks a lot for your understanding.

Peter

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #12
Sorry guys for repeating some of the things which have already been posted. In the first post of this thread I tryed to collect some other minor accessibility issues I have noticed so far. I haven't seen a reply regarding other than playlist view iaccessible interface and statusbar text issue reported today nor in this thread or in the known issues list. I am just making sure they all were noticed. If they can't be fixed is there a way for implementing some workarounds in the future?
If here are some blind users or developers of assistive solutions can you please add your ideas too?

 

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #13
Hello,
Issues fixed in beta2:
1) playlist view iaccessible interface is back. Item texts, position, itemcount as well as their relations are working now. Possible improvement for the future is exposing of the column headers.
2) statusbar is now fully accessible
3) All the equalizer window controls are in the taborder now.

Thanks Peter it's really amazing.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #14
Another small accessibility issue is that after activating some entries in the main menu focus is returned to the toolbar or parent menu object. I think focussing playlist view would be more appropriate. To reproduce:
1) select an item in the playlist view.
2) press alt or shift+F10 to show up the menu bar.
3) arrow right to the edit menu.
4) by repeatedly pressing down arrow select some item which does not open a dialog (E.G. select all) and hit enter.

Reproduced. In the case of "Edit/Select All" it is possible to press the Escape key to move the focus to another window (usually the playlist). In case of the Quick Appearance Setup, the keyboard focus becomes completely "trapped" on the menu, if the main layout was changed.

0.9.5 playlist view accessibility

Reply #15
Hello again,
I see foobar 2000 is now in the active development. We have observed a few things regarding iaccessible support for the playlist control. I am going to add it so we can perhaps discuss it more if needed. I'll try to compare the behaviour with windows listviews because still perhaps this is the most similar control comparable to the playlist view.
Given the fact even listview's MSAA support is quite limited we had to introduce a workaround to be able to properly report focus change when an item is being deleted. I am not completelly sure but I guess FB2K is not firing destroy event when an item is removed from the playlist. Might this be the case?
Also when switching playlists using ctrl+tab or shift+ctrl+tab key bindings we don't seem to be able to detect the focus change. Is focus event fired in this case?

Please note these features are not critical it can just improve the user experience because as the playlist is being switched or the item is deleted new item or new playlist is just anounced automatically.
If there is a chance someone of you might be able to recognize the issue or get interested then please feel free to discuss it.

thanks for your invaluable support