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2.1 Currently there is no way to get the title of a view read by a screen reader. If we had the currently selected view in the window title as well as the current perspective screen readers could read it.
The window title bar already displays the current perspective name, current active editor, the product name, and the current workspace location (if set on command line). In my opinion, the window title bar is overloaded as it is. Can we not do something to allow the view's title to be read?
The only time the active editor is in the title bar is when the editor has focus. So, for the rest of the time, most users just have two items in the title bar -- the perspective and the product name. As a screen reader user, while I am in the editor, which view is active is less important than the name of the file being editted. And, the fact that the editor is active provides sufficient orientation when returning to Eclipse from elsewhere. But, when the editor is not active, it is more likely I will need the type of orientation provided by a view name. So a good compromise would be to put the view name in the title bar whenever an editor is not active. As an expert in screen reader configuration and screen reader user habits, I can tell you with confidence that there is no good alternative to the title bar. The view name is important information, and all other alternatives, save one, would require specialized screen reader support via a configuration or script. The other option, which is far less preferable is to provide a key that would put focus on the tab with the view name for a brief period of time and then return the focus to where it was. This would trigger the MSAA event that would cause the screen reader to speak the view name. However, there are a couple of real useability downsides to that option for screen reader users. First, it would require an additional key stroke in the process of orientation. As it it is, screen reader users already typically use some combination of two or three different screen reader commands to determine where they are: 1. read the title bar 2. read the current item with focus, e.g., current line. 3. Read the status line. This option would add yet another "thing to check". Secondly, and very importantly, it is one more key stroke to learn added on to a huge heap of others. The screen reader users has to know all their screen reader commands in addition to the Eclipse keys. Adding one more thing to discover and remember should always be avoided unless truly necessary.
The window title bar always shows the name of the current visible editor whether is has focus or not. We are looking into this to. It may very well be we will need to place the view name in the title bar also.
I have experimented with using the MSAA support in SWT to add the title to the view. This looks fine using the Inspect Objects tool and Window Eyes appears o do the job but I would like Matts opinion on this solution (as JAWS ignores it). In particular I think WindowEyes may be too verbose to give an adequate context for this. I will attach a patch for you to try.
I was about to attach a patch for this when I discovered that Window Eyes does not use the MSAA info either - it just gets it right without anything from us. So the question now is why can Window Eyes read it and JAWS can't?
FYI, this is a bit of a hack, but one way to have JAWS and Window-Eyes read the current View name or the current Editor name is to use the eclipse CTRL+F6/F7 hotkeys. These allow navigating to editors/views in a similar manner to the way Windows' & GTK's ALT+TAB and ALT+SHIFT+TAB let you cycle through (and navigate to) application windows. Here are the eclipse hotkeys in detail: CTRL+F6 - open a list of editors, with the 'next' one selected. Release the keys to navigate to the selected editor. Type CTRL+F6, and release, twice in a row to get the screen reader to read the name of the current editor. CTRL+SHIFT+F6 - open a list of editors, with the 'previous' one selected. Release the keys to navigate to the selected editor. Type CTRL+SHIFT+F6, and release, twice in a row to get the screen reader to read the name of the current editor. CTRL+F7 - open a list of views, with the 'next' one selected. Release the keys to navigate to the selected view. Type CTRL+F7, and release, twice in a row to get the screen reader to read the name of the current view. CTRL+SHIFT+F7 - open a list of views, with the 'previous' one selected. Release the keys to navigate to the selected view. Type CTRL+SHIFT+F7, and release, twice in a row to get the screen reader to read the name of the current view. Note that this bug report is very similar to bug 10846 (possibly even a dup). I will make this same annotation in that bug report.
I don't think this is a such a great idea as it is easy to have a loss of context by a switch of focus. I think Carolyns solution is much better than this.
Reassigning to Tod as this is an accessibility issue.
Marking as a dup of 10846 as tab titles and view titles are the same thing now. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 10846 ***
