Difference between revisions of "Accessibility"

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You also have to activate AT support in OpenOffice.org: Choose menu Tools/Options/Accessibility and check “Support assistive technology tools”.
 
You also have to activate AT support in OpenOffice.org: Choose menu Tools/Options/Accessibility and check “Support assistive technology tools”.
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If you can't access the OOo GUI, you might want to use a registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\OpenOffice.org\Accessibility\AtToolSupport (dword:1)
  
 
If you want to install the Access-Bridge only for one user, you can find some hints at [[Windows Access Bridge Single-User Install]].
 
If you want to install the Access-Bridge only for one user, you can find some hints at [[Windows Access Bridge Single-User Install]].

Revision as of 15:46, 18 July 2008

OpenOffice.org has support for various Accessibility aspects: keyboard navigation, scheming, assistive technology (AT) support, and much more.

Details can be found here: http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/whitepaper.html

There is a mailing list which can be used for user questions and comments, as well as for developer related things.

Please subscribe to accessibility@ui.openoffice.org, or have a look into http://ui.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=accessibility

The Accessibility Project pages are here: http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/

OpenOffice.org AT support

OpenOffice.org exposes it's information to AT via the Java Accessibility API (JAA) on Windows, and via GNOME Accessibility API (ATK) on Linux/Solaris with GNOME. This way OpenOffice.org should be accessible with AT supporting JAA or ATK.

More details about this can be found here: http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/at-support.html.

Windows

To use Java Accessibility, a current version of Java (v1.5 or newer) must be installed. This can be found here: http://java.sun.com/

Verify that OpenOffice.org uses the correct version: Choose menu Tools/Options/Java.

You also need the “Java Access Bridge for Windows v2”, which can be found here: http://java.sun.com/products/accessbridge/

You also have to activate AT support in OpenOffice.org: Choose menu Tools/Options/Accessibility and check “Support assistive technology tools”. If you can't access the OOo GUI, you might want to use a registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\OpenOffice.org\Accessibility\AtToolSupport (dword:1)

If you want to install the Access-Bridge only for one user, you can find some hints at Windows Access Bridge Single-User Install.

GNOME

Everything you need is included in current versions of GNOME.

Activate AT support globally: Preferences/Accessibility/Assistive Technology Support, check “Enable assistive technologies” More information can be found here: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/

MacOSX

Please have a look here.

AT that works

In general, AT support is much better on GNOME than on Windows. This is no limitation within OpenOffice.org, but in Windows AT, which concentrates on other things, not on Java Accessibility.

  • Windows, Screen Reader
    • ZoomText 7.11, 8.12, 9.x
    • JAWS 6.2, 7.x
    • NVDA (open source!)
  • Windows, Screen Magnifier
    • ZoomText 7.11, 8.12, 9.x
  • Windows, On Screen keyboard
    • Probably all, because they just send Windows messages
  • GNOME, Screen Reader
    • Orca
    • Gnopernicus
  • GNOME, Screen Magnifier
    • Gnopernicus
    • (Orca)
  • GNOME, On Screen keyboard
    • GOK
    • Dasher
  • Mac OSX
    • Voice Over

Orca

In order to get OpenOffice.org (Version 2.3 and up) speaking through the graphical screenreader Orca (http://live.gnome.org/Orca), you don't necessarily need to start a gnome-session in GNU/Linux. Setting and exporting the following variables in the shell, will tell the soffice command to use the atk-spi bridge of GTK.

 export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN="gtk" GTK_MODULES="gail:atk-bridge"
 orca &  # if not already running
 soffice file.odt

With Orca running, all of OOo's menu functions are accessible with speech and braille using the left "Alt" key or the right "Menu" key on your keyboard, in combination with navigation functions that Orca provides with its hotkeys (usually Scroll_Lock plus one or more other keys).

External Links

The Accessibility Users' Wiki

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