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#1

Hi, i need help with a problem i found in libreoffice. I wanted to use the program ware to convert documents into pef files so i can emboss them on my braille embosser. The issue is that i’m blind and have to use voiceover on my mac. When i started libreoffice and open the extension file for braille everything worked perfectly, but when i shall set the settings for the embosser conversion in format menu (braille) the problem came. The popup-buttons dint work with the screenreader witch means that i can’t get the settings done. I asked for help and thought that this might just be one time i need to adjust this parameters so thats okay. Than i should open the file-menu and hit export to braille. I did so and the problem came again. Here i need to select the filetype (per) each time i shall export something and the popup thing dosnt work. What to do?

Best regards Markus.

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
I am trying to forwards this to the "Accessibility" mailing list just
in case anyone there has a good answer.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Hi Markus

Sorry to hear that you are having problems with LibreOffice. There are quite a few issues surrounding combo boxes, list boxes and pop up buttons in LibreOffice. Even though the program has had some great improvements in the last year issues with list boxes and pop up buttons still remain to be fixed.

I will try to guide you through a few steps in a hope that you at least can get something exported.
I suppose it is the odt2braille extension your talking about?

Go to File - Export to braille
Press tab three times to get to the first pop-up button
Press the down arrow twice to select PEF format (sorry VoiceOver does not announce anything but the PEF is last). At least for me the extension seems to save my last setting. Also note that PEF seems to be the only of the three available choices that disables the next pop-up button so if pressing tab takes you to a check box then you have selected the correct format.

The rest of the settings in this dialog should be accessible from the VoiceOver-cursor.

Let us know if you can make it work. I'm getting some exception with liblouisxml that I haven't looked into but that might be something with my specific setup.

Let's hope that the improvements to Windows accessibility, that is currently going on within the project, will rub off on the accessibility improvements for other platforms as well.

Regards,
Niklas Johansson

#4

Hi,

Hi :slight_smile:
I am trying to forwards this to the "Accessibility" mailing list just
in case anyone there has a good answer.

Sorry for my late response. odt2braille is an extension, so it has the
same accessibility limitations as all LibreOffice extensions that create a
user interface. The extension system in LibreOffice and OpenOffice does
not allow us to explicitly add labels to drop-down lists and other UI
elemennts (except buttons). As a consequence, screen readers are left to
guess which label belongs to which buttons based on their position.
Probably, the only way to make odt2braille accessible is rewriting it
entirely in C++ in order to embed it into OpenOffice and LibreOffice
instead of installing it as an extension. So far, no one has offered to do
this.

Best regards,

Christophe

#5

Christophe Strobbe wrote:

Probably, the only way to make odt2braille accessible is rewriting it entirely in C++ in order to embed it into OpenOffice and LibreOffice instead of installing it as an extension. So far, no one has offered to do this.

The real issue is that one can not select the writing system from within LibO.
Do that, and ODT2name-your-A11Y-writing-system is instantly irrelevant,and thus obsolete.

jonathon

#6

Hi,

Christophe Strobbe wrote:

Probably, the only way to make odt2braille accessible is rewriting it
entirely in C++ in order to embed it into OpenOffice and LibreOffice
instead of installing it as an extension. So far, no one has offered to
do this.

The real issue is that one can not select the writing system from within
LibO.
Do that, and ODT2name-your-A11Y-writing-system is instantly irrelevant,and
thus obsolete.

I don't see the relevance of the writing system to the
accessibility-related limitations of the extensions API. Can you elaborate
on that?

The writing system is typically set at the OS level.

(Setting the language of a document or of part of a document to a
non-Western language is tricky in LibreOffice and OpenOffice, but that was
not what the original question was about.)

Best regards,

Christophe