OT: accessibility (was "Re: simplified Python parsing question")

[Eric S. Johansson]

On 7/30/2012 10:54 PM, Tim Chase wrote:
> On 07/30/12 21:11, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
>> the ability for multiple people to work on the same document at
>> the same time is really important. Can't do that with Word or
>> Libre office.  revision tracking in traditional word processors
>> are unpleasant to work with especially if your hands are broken.
> If you're developing, I might recommend using text-based storage and
> actual revision-control software.  Hosting HTML (or Restructured
> Text, or plain-text, or LaTeX) documents on a shared repository such
> as GitHub or Bitbucket provides nicely for accessible documentation
> as well as much more powerful revision control.

But then you hit a second layer of "doesn't really work nice with speech 
recognition". Using a markup language  can actually be more difficult than using 
a WYSIWYG editor. For example, with a soft word, I can do most of the basics 
using speech commands and I have what's called "Select-and-Say" editing 
capability in the buffer. Can't do that with any other editor. They are not 
integrated with NaturallySpeaking.

A few years ago I created a small scale framework for speech recognition users 
(akasha). You use the domain specific market notation to be able to construct 
Web applications. Instead of using classic HTML models, it used things that were 
more appropriate to speech driven environment. unlike with HTML, which you 
cannot write using speech recognition and a boatload of effort, akasha was 95% 
speakable using out-of-the-box speech recognition.

This also brings me to the concept of how the design for speech recognition use. 
Modifying an existing user interface or creating a new one either through a 
speakable data format and minimal application changes or by the application and 
grammar to a recognition engine and manipulating something that isn't speakable.

 From experience, outside of the first model works well if you are looking for 
relatively easy and very high marks accessibility, the second is required if you 
are operating within a team and need to integrate with everybody else. 
Unfortunately,  the second technique points out just how badly designed most 
software is and that led me to the concept of no-UI (not unlike no SQL) which is 
more controversial than I want to get into right now.


>
>> It would please me greatly if you would be willing to try an
>> experiment. live my life for a while. Sit in a chair and tell
>> somebody what to type and where to move the mouse without moving
>> your hands. keep your hands gripping the arms or the sides of
>> the chair. The rule is you can't touch the keyboard you can't
>> touch the mice, you can't point at the screen. I suspect you
>> would have a hard time surviving half a day with these
>> limitations. no embarrassment in that, most people wouldn't make
>> it as far as a half a day.
> I've tried a similar experiment and am curious on your input device.
>   Eye-tracking/dwell-clicking?  A sip/puff joystick?  Of the various
> input methods I tried, I found that Dasher[1] was the most
> intuitive, had a fairly high input rate and accuracy (both
> initially, and in terms of correcting mistakes I'd made).  It also
> had the ability to generate dictionaries/vocabularies that made more
> appropriate/weighted suggestions which might help in certain
> contexts (e.g. pre-load a Python grammar allowing for choosing full
> atoms in a given context).

Just ordinary speech recognition. NaturallySpeaking. Part of my hand problem is 
that I no longer have good fine motor control which sucks because I used to 
enjoy drawing with pencils and juggling. I've tried dasher and I don't have find 
enough motor control to make it work very well. Sometimes I play games with my 
girlfriend at fly or die and the user interfaces for the various game 
controllers is simple enough that my hands only get in the way some of the time. 
Or at least that's what say when she is beating me soundly at billiards. :-)

Some of the ideas you've mentioned have been thought in another contexts. The 
problem is that when it comes to working with code, you have two problems. 
Creation of code and editing code. Which do you do more? If you're like most of 
us, it is editing. That's why I made the toggle words feature something that 
would toggle both from a string name to a codename and vice versa.the future 
version of this and, this is where I'm going to need a lot of help from the 
Python community, would translate the statement in a buffer to a particular 
two-dimensional form and place it into a special window that NaturallySpeaking 
can operate on. The reason for covering it from the one-dimensional string of a 
statement to a two-dimensional form is to make it easier to disambiguate 
different features using speech. The idea isn't fully fleshed out because I want 
to get through this one first and actually be able to start writing code again.