From: Peter Korn ([email protected])
Date: 01/24/03
Hi Aaron, Michael,
I'm cc-ing the GOK Development mailing list <[email protected]>. I have a feeling that the GOK engineers aren't on the mozilla-accessibility mailing list.
Michael - at the risk of repeating arguments Bill has made to you, I strongly suggest you take a close look at GOK. They've done a lot to provide direct access to menus, toolbars, and with their "UI Grab" feature, the contents of a dialog box. These they then format onto a switch keyboard for rapid direct access. While GOK does not presently do this with links on a web page, it would be a very straightforward application of their techniquies layered on top of the GNOME Accessibility API (through which an AT can enumerate the links in an AccessibleHypertext document such as the web page in Mozilla).
As GOK is open source, it is perhaps the best place for research - you can build on the work of others to rapidly get the features you want, with no royalties or licensing fees. And, thanks to the fact that it the code is LGPL, you have a very strong incentive to contribute your work back to the commons - thereby allowing the next person to build on your work.
By the way, I was recently at the Assistive Technology Industry Association conference in Orlando, where I spoke with researchers in Japan working on a brainwave<->switch interface, and other researchers in the U.S. looking at switch interfaces based on recognition of a limited vocabulary from people with highly dysarthic speech. Both were very interested in using GOK as a development and execution platform for their switch interfaces.
Regards,
Peter Korn
Sun Accessibility architect
Aaron Leventhal wrote:
>
> Michael,
>
> It sounds like a really interesting project. Will there
> be any way to access form controls in web content,
> bookmarks or any of the menus or other features? Or
> will it be for link activation and document reading only?
>
> I now understand your justifcation better for building
> it into Mozilla, using XPCOM. However, since you are
> currently only on Windows, did you consider the need to
> access other applications? Will the switch software
> possibly conflict with other switch software the user
> may be using to access those other applications? Will
> you need to work with switch solution manufacturers?
>
> As far as your other questions, I do think that forward
> and back options would be useful. You could possibly
> insert extra links or buttons for those things into the
> start of each page as it is loaded.
>
> I will be in Stuttgart for 6 months starting in May --
> perhaps we can meet and work on some solutions
> together. Have you tried to connect with any users or
> other experts in switch access? The Mozilla
> accessibility newsgroup is probably not the best place
> to do that -- accessibility on this platform is still
> being developed, so only cutting edge people are
> attempting to use those features.
>
> Good luck,
> Aaron
>
> Michael Bensch wrote:
> > Hi Bill and Aaron,
> >
> > your points are appreciated and certainly got me thinking. GOK is an
> > exciting project and maybe a good reason for switch users to switch to
> > Gnome :-)
> >
> > A large part of the research here at the Institute of Medical Psychology
> > and Behavioral Neurobiology in T�bingen is devoted to brain-computer
> > interfaces (BCI) ie. users with severe motor disabilities, but able to
> > generate neural signals with the brain which can be measured and
> > interpreted as a binary choice.
> > This type of interaction differs from standard switch access in two points:
> > 1. the probability for a correct signal can vary from 0.65 to 0.95
> > depending on the user - we thus need response verification in our software.
> > 2. The maximum rate of communication is 10-20 bits per minute - we thus
> > have to reduce the selectable "accessibles" on any screen to a bare
> > minimum, and optimize the selection process by using a visual binary
> > recursive subgrouping algorithm. (A "direct" or "scanning" selection
> > technique, or even a keyboard (to answer Aaron's question) would be too
> > inefficient.)
> >
> > We are using our own neural signal processing software, which is bound
> > to a win platform but does not currently offer any accessibility
> > features (so sadly we cannot use Gnome which seems to be a wonderfully
> > accessible OS).
> >
> > Given these factors, I thought it best to create a XUL/CPP interface to
> > have direct access to mozilla. This allows us to:
> > 1. present the visual binary subgrouping cue directly on the web page (I
> > am using the inIFlasher interface for this - thanks to Joe Hewitt and
> > any other contributors for this very useful piece of code!)
> > 2. access history information for further optimizing link selection
> > (place links that are selected often, at the top of a huffman tree)
> > 3. Keep the "switch interpretation code" platform-independant using
> > mozilla's wonderful XPCOM technology, rather than integrating it into
> > our win software, making it even harder to migrate to another platform
> > in the future.
> > (If there are other solutions to 1. or 2. I would be very interested.)
> >
> > I agree with Bill that in the long run, more sophisticated switch
> > 'access methods' should be in the assistive technology itself, and that
> > this is not really the responsibility of a web browser, but at the
> > moment, for our particular application, I am positive that the close
> > proximity of our module to the mozilla code base can only benefit its
> > users!
> >
> > Having said all that, I still believe that many standard switch access
> > users might see some use in this new interface. I must admit that I have
> > never used switch access software and the following would interest me:
> >
> > 1. What is the most efficient method to choose from say, 20 links on a
> > page, that current switch access software provides? (with efficient I
> > mean: with as little switch presses as possible. ie. a scanning
> > interface would be inefficient.) How would a task like this be
> > accomplished with the GOK?
> > 2. Does current software allow for response verification, ie. offer
> > "back" options during selection of a link, in case of an error?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Michael
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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