unity-design team mailing list archive

[Gerry Boland <gerry.boland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri 16 Mar 2012 10:15:05 CET, Alan Bell wrote:
> On 16/03/12 02:23, Luke Yelavich wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> With all the discussion recently about the hud, and how its not
>> accessible, I've been looking at the hud code for Unity 2D,
>> investigating why its not accessible. It turns out that the Unity 2D
>> devs did indeed do their part in making sure the hud is accessible as
>> possible, however the results, whilst being indicated as buttons, do
>> not have any text spoken. This is because the Unity 2D devs decided
>> to use a text string different to what visually gets shown, for
>> various reasons. The problem is, that this text string coming from
>> the hud service process is currently always an empty string.
>>
>> Setting about working out an alternative, I realized that at this
>> late stage of precise development, this could not be properly solved
>> without getting a fair number of exceptions in the form of feature
>> freeze exceptions, UI freeze exceptions, as well as getting strings
>> translated. In addition, I have not yet been able to come up with a
>> way to audibly indicate hud search results. Sure I have an idea, but
>> I am not sure if there should be more detail.
>>
>> So at this point, I think we'd be better off disabling the hud for
>> screen reader installs, due to the above. I.e, since we don't have
>> time to work out an audible representation of hud results, and get it
>> implemented and tested, I think disabling the hud is a better course
>> of action. I'd rather have the hud available when its fully
>> accessible with results that Orca users can understand, than have a
>> half-baked accessible implementation that could confuse users.
>>
>> I will start a discussion about how we could best represent hud
>> results in another thread.
>>
>> Luke
>>
> Hi Luke,
>
> I can understand the thinking behind this but I do think it is rather
> sad that a feature that has been introduced like this and won't be
> available to everyone to use. So at this stage for Precise we are
> looking at writing off Unity 3d altogether and going with Unity2d,
> without the HUD. I find this a bit disappointing to say the least, and
> I think the lack of accessibility in the HUD from day 1 is a failure
> of the design process, but we are where we are.
>
> Alan.
>


Hi guys,
I'm the author of the HUD in Unity2D. Luke, you are correct that I 
planned for accessibility, depending on a special string being supplied 
by the HUD service. Unfortunately that string isn't being supplied, 
hence the HUD isn't accessible.

I have a fix ready where I generate a a11y string from the supplied 
(HTML formatted) HUD result here:
https://code.launchpad.net/~gerboland/unity-2d/hud-a11y-fix
I just want to figure out a way to automatically test it before merging.

I accept that it is a poor showing that I didn't fully test the 
accessibility of the HUD before merging. For this I can only apologise 
and strive to do better. Automated testing of a11y is a goal I have to 
help improve this situation, Alan already gave me advice on how to do 
that.

Our ambition is for Unity2D to be a fully a11y-friendly desktop. I ask 
for your patience as we tackle this challenge, but also appreciate all 
criticism and comments sent our way. Feel free to poke me personally 
about any important omissions.

Thanking you both
-Gerry