interact.airmedia.org chat

[Janina Sajka]

Thanks for clearing up this misnamed technical issue.

A couple points ...

Java is NOT intrinsically graphical, it's object oriented. If properly
labeled, the Sun Java Swing classes can provide a mechanism for
extracting the needed data. There's even a java interface client for
ASCII terminals called charva for precisely that purpose. Charva is
written in an attempt to allow dumb ASCII terminal deployments to access
java apps, and could therefore also support screen reader needs.
Emphasis on could.

http://www.pitman.co.za/projects/charva/

I think the next question needs to be "What Java are they using?" Or, to
put it differently, is this written in Eclipse (pretty accessible--or
could be), or with Swing (also fixable), or some other Java?

Lorenzo Taylor writes:
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> Sorry for the thread, but I lost the previous message.
> 
> OK.  I tried both links2 and elinks with interact.airmedia.org, ad we have a
> much bigger problem than I first thought.  The chat client used by this site is
> not using javascript.  It's a java applet.  There is a lot of confusion about
> this since the names java and javascript are quite similar.  Unfortunately for
> all of us, they are two entirely different things.  The major differences for
> the purpose of this topic is that links2 and elinks are somewhat capable of
> handling javascript.  Neither will even touch java.  So we are now down to three
> possible solutions:
> 
> 1.  ditch the applet, which is the best way to go for accessibility, but is
> probably not something they can or will do.
> 2.  Create an IRC or Jabber gateway that will access the java-based chat client
> and allow users to connect to it through more accessible means, this is now the
> intermediately difficult solution, as I will discuss below.
> 3.  write an entirely new text-based browser or extend the capabilities of
> links2 or elinks to be able to run java applets.  This is harder than it looks,
> since it would require that a java virtual machine be installed on the system
> which would handle the java code itself.  The problem is that java applets are
> generally graphical in nature, and getting them to run on a text console would
> require not only a total rework of the browser, but also a total rework of the
> java virtual machine so that it could render the graphical interface using
> curses or some other text-based library.  I'm not saying this is impossible by
> any means, it's just far beyond the scope of my expertise, and by far the most
> difficult solution from a programming standpoint.
> 
> Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
> 
> Lorenzo
> - -- 
> Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
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-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.240.715.1272
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com
Bringing the Owasys 22C screenless cell phone to the U.S. and Canada. Go to http://www.ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more.

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina at freestandards.org		http://a11y.org