VirtualBox

source: vbox/trunk/doc/manual/en_US/Accessibility.xml@ 78144

Last change on this file since 78144 was 73276, checked in by vboxsync, 6 years ago

doc/manual: Big build system overhaul, because the use of entities and catalogs eliminates the need to have placeholders in XML which previously needed separate preprocessing. Many cleanups, including replacing almost all pattern rules (since their dependencies had to be too generous) and using defines instead. Also integrated many cleanups for the user manual text (which needs careful review, couldn't check yet if it uses any additional tags which some of our XSLT would ignore).

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1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd"[
4<!ENTITY % all.entities SYSTEM "all-entities.ent">
5%all.entities;
6]>
7
8<book>
9 <bookinfo>
10 <title>&VBOX_PRODUCT;</title>
11
12 <subtitle>Accessibility Reference</subtitle>
13
14 <edition>Version &VBOX_VERSION_STRING;</edition>
15
16 <corpauthor>&VBOX_VENDOR;</corpauthor>
17
18 <address>https://www.virtualbox.org</address>
19
20 <copyright>
21 <year>2016-&VBOX_C_YEAR;</year>
22
23 <holder>&VBOX_VENDOR;</holder>
24 </copyright>
25 </bookinfo>
26
27 <chapter>
28 <title>Introduction</title>
29 <para>
30 Welcome to the <emphasis role="strong">VirtualBox Accessibility Support</emphasis> documentation! This document is primarily
31 a reference to help people who are interested in our project accessibility support and will describe how to use VirtualBox
32 user interface step-by-step. Since whole the application navigation will be explained here, this document will also be
33 helpful for those who are not familiar with our product user interface and wish to learn more. It will be written in a bit
34 excessive manner so that many obvious things will be explained too precisely to make it easier to understand by ear for a
35 blind users. The document will be periodically updated with recent changes and test-cases allowing us to more strictly
36 follow the required guidelines and make our product fully accessible.
37 </para>
38 <para>
39 Our application is based on Qt5, a powerful cross-platform library which allows to visualize various user interface ideas
40 the most flexible and native way. This also means that the library we use is responsible for many navigation and
41 accessibility aspects (like fonts, size hints, colors, look&amp;feel patterns and many other things), but not for all of
42 them. Nativity as one of the main ideas of the Qt-based application sometimes brings additional complexity because there is
43 always at least one host which uses unique combination of fonts and colors which breaks accessibility support in an
44 unpredictable way.
45 </para>
46 <para>
47 Independently on platform we are supporting screen-reader applications which can communicate with Qt5 accessibility
48 interface which supports Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA), OS X Accessibility, and the Unix/X11 AT-SPI standard.
49 </para>
50 <para>
51 Our application user interface is able to be started in two modes:
52 <itemizedlist>
53 <listitem>
54 <para>
55 First of them is <emphasis role="strong">VirtualBox Manager</emphasis> user interface, the main application window
56 which allows to manage and configure virtual machines and their groups. Besides that, this window provides user with
57 access to various global and machine related tools allowing to administrate some of VirtualBox objects and their
58 settings.
59 </para>
60 </listitem>
61 <listitem>
62 <para>
63 Second application mode is <emphasis role="strong">Virtual Machine</emphasis> user interface, which allows to control
64 virtual machine guest screens as separate application windows. Besides that, this interface allows to access some of
65 machine tools and adjust guest screens up to your needs, by changing their resolution and toggling full-screen,
66 seamless and scaled modes.
67 </para>
68 </listitem>
69 </itemizedlist>
70 But first of all we should start from the <emphasis role="strong">General Concept</emphasis> which is related to whole the
71 GUI and summarizes the navigation and accessibility aspects we are using for whole application.
72 </para>
73 </chapter>
74
75 <chapter>
76 <title>General concept</title>
77 <para>
78 This chapter describes the general navigation and accessibility concept. We should note that not every detail of this
79 concept is already implemented and not every widget in our project already follows that concept. There is still large work
80 to be done in that regard. But in the end whole the project should correspond to this concept.
81 </para>
82 <para>
83 In short, every application window of our project should be navigated using the following approaches:
84 <itemizedlist>
85 <listitem><para>Mouse Navigation</para></listitem>
86 <listitem><para>Keyboard Navigation</para></listitem>
87 <listitem><para>Screen-reader Navigation</para></listitem>
88 </itemizedlist>
89 </para>
90 <sect1>
91 <title>Mouse Navigation</title>
92 <itemizedlist>
93 <listitem>
94 <para>
95 Each interactable widget can be focused with mouse (if that is not restricted by underlying host OS).
96 </para>
97 </listitem>
98 <listitem>
99 <para>
100 Each hovered interactable widget causes own tool-tip to appear.
101 </para>
102 </listitem>
103 <listitem>
104 <para>
105 Each tool-tip is given either in imperative mood (ex. "Create new virtual machine") or in short form (ex. "New").
106 </para>
107 </listitem>
108 <listitem>
109 <para>
110 Short tool-tip form is only used if context is obvious for a user.
111 </para>
112 </listitem>
113 <listitem>
114 <para>
115 Tool-tip can contain shortcut mentioned in parentheses.
116 </para>
117 </listitem>
118 <listitem>
119 <para>
120 Each hovered menu bar / toolbar action causes own status-tip to appear (if window have status-bar).
121 </para>
122 </listitem>
123 <listitem>
124 <para>
125 Each status-tip is given in imperative mood only.
126 </para>
127 </listitem>
128 <listitem>
129 <para>
130 TBD...
131 </para>
132 </listitem>
133 </itemizedlist>
134 </sect1>
135 <sect1>
136 <title>Keyboard Navigation</title>
137 <itemizedlist>
138 <listitem>
139 <para>
140 Each interactable widget can be focused with keyboard (if that is not restricted by underlying host OS).
141 </para>
142 </listitem>
143 <listitem>
144 <para>
145 Focusing is possible through tabbing or mnemonic navigation.
146 </para>
147 </listitem>
148 <listitem>
149 <para>
150 Each button and menu bar / toolbar action can be directly activated with keyboard.
151 </para>
152 </listitem>
153 <listitem>
154 <para>
155 Activation is possible via shortcut or mnemonic.
156 </para>
157 </listitem>
158 <listitem>
159 <para>
160 Each shortcut is configurable through application preferences.
161 </para>
162 </listitem>
163 <listitem>
164 <para>
165 Mnemonic mentioned above is underlined alphanumeric character which is a part of widget label (if widget has label).
166 Mnemonic being triggered in conjunction with the Alt key.
167 </para>
168 </listitem>
169 <listitem>
170 <para>
171 Each mnemonic is unique within the visible part of current application window, there are no collisions.
172 </para>
173 </listitem>
174 <listitem>
175 <para>
176 TBD...
177 </para>
178 </listitem>
179 </itemizedlist>
180 </sect1>
181 <sect1>
182 <title>Screen-reader Navigation</title>
183 <itemizedlist>
184 <listitem>
185 <para>
186 Each interactable widget can be focused with screen-reader cursor.
187 </para>
188 </listitem>
189 <listitem>
190 <para>
191 Each focused widget have clear name (or full description) in native user language.
192 </para>
193 </listitem>
194 <listitem>
195 <para>
196 Each button and menu bar / toolbar action can be directly activated through the screen-reader cursor functionality.
197 </para>
198 </listitem>
199 <listitem>
200 <para>
201 Each complex widget which has children (like list, tree, table and similar) is represented as closed group which
202 encapsulates it's children clearly.
203 </para>
204 </listitem>
205 <listitem>
206 <para>
207 While navigating user is able to skip any group without forcing to be entered inside.
208 </para>
209 </listitem>
210 <listitem>
211 <para>
212 Each group child can be a group itself with the same rules as above applicable.
213 </para>
214 </listitem>
215 <listitem>
216 <para>
217 Each text-field can be directly edited through the screen-reader cursor functionality.
218 </para>
219 </listitem>
220 <listitem>
221 <para>
222 TBD...
223 </para>
224 </listitem>
225 </itemizedlist>
226 </sect1>
227 </chapter>
228</book>
229<!-- vim: set shiftwidth=2 tabstop=2 expandtab: -->
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