Option to disable reporting of graphics

[nvaccessAuto]

Reported by surfer0627 on 2015-01-21 06:50
Hi,
Could developers consider to add an option to disable reporting of graphics?
While Using Ebook reader (provided by reading.udn.com) reads magazine, User hears NVDA reports "graphic" for every line.
If we could add this option, it will make reading more efficient.
Thanks.

Blocking #4974

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 1 by leonarddr on 2015-01-21 11:20
I think this would be a nice addition to the document formatting. We could disable reporting of links, so why not graphics?

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 2 by bhavyashah on 2015-01-21 11:41
Hi,
I agree with the reporter and commenter.
In another application I deal with relatively often, sometimes 'graphic' is present. In this situation, I absolutely don't require to be informed that the text is a graphic, where I had thought about such a feature...
The program I'm talking about is C.A.R.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 4 by leonarddr on 2015-01-22 09:45
I could give it a try whenever i know which files to edit. Is there a way to get an overview of those?

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 5 by nvdakor on 2015-01-22 09:52
Hi,
You need to edit at least three files: the config specification (config module), settings dialog (part of GUI) and the one that controls which formatting info is spoken (forgot which one it is). I think you should look at the third file first, see how graphics are detected, then add a way to not announce it via modifying config and settings dialog. Good luck.
Thanks.

[nvaccessAuto]

Attachment graphics.patch added by leonarddr on 2015-01-22 10:44
Description:
Initial try

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 6 by leonarddr on 2015-01-22 10:46
I added an initial try as an attachment. It at least works in Firefox and Word, although in Word it disables reporting of the image entirely, including the alt tag. May be one of the more experienced devs feels like diving into this?

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 7 by leonarddr on 2015-01-28 15:46
The current patch contains an indentation mistake for PowerPoint, which I fixed in my fork of the NVDA repo. http://bitbucket.org/leonardder/nvda.git
Everything seems to work fine now, except that Word entirely ignores the graphics whenever the reporting of graphics is disabled. This shouldn't be the case, of course.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 8 by jteh (in reply to comment 7) on 2015-01-29 00:14
Replying to leonarddr:

Everything seems to work fine now, except that Word entirely ignores the graphics whenever the reporting of graphics is disabled. This shouldn't be the case, of course.

It does make sense, though. In browse mode on the web, the alt text becomes actual text content that you can cursor through, even though it's inside the graphic. In Word, however, the alt text is not content at all; you can't cursor through it because it's just meta information on the graphic. When you ask NVDA not to read something, that includes meta information. Otherwise, you'd still hear, say, "5 rows and 5 columns" even with reporting of tables disabled.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 11 by jteh (in reply to comment 7) on 2015-04-10 01:36
Replying to leonarddr:

Everything seems to work fine now, except that Word entirely ignores the graphics whenever the reporting of graphics is disabled. This shouldn't be the case, of course.

Mick and I just discussed this. We agree that this probably isn't ideal behaviour and that we should read the alternate text for graphics in Word (but not eh "graphic" role). However, I'm not sure how we'll do this yet.

[zahyur]

Hi,
This could be very helpful in some web sites where there is an extensive use of graphics, too.
Some advanced users, who come from another screen readers. also recently expressed their frustration about inability to disable reporting of graphics.
Please, raise the priority of this issue a little.
Thanks.

[jcsteh]

See the above comment re Word. We actually haven't worked out how to do this yet for Word without losing alternate text. We probably can't accept this change until we work that out, and figuring out how is nontrivial.

[zahyur]

I understand your conserns, but in other hand I'm almost sure that most of the users, who will disable the reporting of graphics, could live with losing alternate text in Microsoft Word, at least initially. I.e. I think not having it at all hurts more than it not working properly in Microsoft Word.
Also, one could disable it for Firefox via config profile and leave it enabled globally, or enable it for Microsoft Word via config profile and disable it globally.
There could be a worning of some sort in the user guide, which later can be removed when the issue is resolved.

[LeonarddeR]

An alternative option could be incubating this change into next, while not implementing it into the master branch/stable release. This way, people using next could test this functionality until it is refined enough to fit for master.

[jcsteh]

We can't ship this half-baked--it will just confuse people--and there's no point in incubating it on next until it's fully baked from a functionality perspective.

[rafaelbald]

Was there any evolution in this process?
The direction of the accessibility project that we develop here in UFSM depends on this functionality being in operation.
Enable or disable the option to report the graph in texts can be allocated in the reader profiles.
By default it is enabled, but for the user's interest it is disabled.
Excuse me I do not understand code, but by meddling a bit, leaving out the term "graphic", located in the ControlType.py file, it would record a silence (a pause) when disabled, so it would not affect reading the alts in any file type.
In short, the reader would not fail to read, he would only read the word Graphic or read a pause.

Here:
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/source/controlTypes.py#L229

[derekriemer]

You guys want to disable graphics, or you simply don't want them to speak in your PDF? I'm pretty sure makingg users disable graphics to make your PDF read correctly is a bad idea.

…

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 8:08 AM, rafaelbald ***@***.***> wrote: Was there any evolution in this process? The direction of the accessibility project that we develop here in UFSM depends on this functionality being in operation. Enable or disable the option to report the graph in texts can be allocated in the reader profiles. By default it is enabled, but for the user's interest it is disabled. Excuse me I do not understand code, but by meddling a bit, leaving out the term "graphic", located in the ControlType.py file, it would record a silence (a pause) when disabled, so it would not affect reading the alts in any file type. In short, the reader would not fail to read, he would only read the word Graphic or read a pause. Here: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/master/source/controlTypes.py#L229 <http://url> — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4837 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFGivYWS5kN6WJH_6bngcatHo_PupWREks5r2IpbgaJpZM4Gp6jO> .

-- Derek Riemer: Improving the world one byte at a time! - University of Colorado Boulder Department of computer science, 4th year undergraduate student. - Accessibility enthusiast. - Proud user of the NVDA screen reader. - Open source enthusiast. - Skier. Personal website <http://derekriemer.com>

[jage9]

I believe the request is for the word "graphic" to not be spoken, just as we have an option to not speak heading or link tags.

[rafaelbald]

@jage9 yes!

[rafaelbald]

@derekriemer

It's not my or our PDF.

It is a proposal, a project, that with the use of NVDA, we have a pre-established reading form and a way to edit the digital files of the institution's journals (www.ufsm.br) for accessibility.

We do not want NVDA to speak the word "graphic" because:

1. The intention is to have a read organization by the exported xml structure from indesign (created taged pdf) to pdf.
2. Let's use "Alt" for images (graphics) and also for invisible location stamps for pages, titles, end of articles, headings, editorials ... that NVDA will read.
3. Let us have the concern of making the coherent descriptions of the images, as you specify them when they are: Photo, illustration, graphic, drawing, work of art, engraving, painting and so on.

I understand that on the Internet and other shared content, which has little or no accessibility concern, make a lot of non-specific graphic content a problem. And so it is important to speak the word "graphic" to locate the place and define the content. But this becomes repetitive for thoughtful and elaborate content for and with accessibility.

So why not allow the user to choose when and how NVDA will speak the word "graphic" !?

[Mary5958]

I remember it used to be in a veeeery old version at the very beginning but after some restructuring on this part it was forgotten to be added again or they didn't find it so important, I dunno. If it wasn't on a work computer I would suggest for now the Audio Themes addon that at least substitutes the speaking of various roles including the graphics with sounds. Martina

[jcsteh]

@rafaelbald: IMO, it is inappropriate to *require* that users disable reporting of "graphic". Yes, you might be including such information in your alt text, but that's conflating content with semantics. This makes for an inconsistent user experience. An NVDA user understands that hearing "graphic" (or seeing "gra" in braille or hearing a graphic earcon with an add-on) means there is graphical content. Furthermore, if they move by character or word, they will be told when they are moving outside of the graphic, which gives them an indication of where it starts and ends. Instead, you've defined your own user experience, inherently tied to the "content" (and only optimised for speech users). Having said that, the reason this hasn't yet been implemented is that the current implementation silences graphics altogether in Word (not just the word "graphic"), since alt text isn't considered content in Word. We don't have a solution for that problem yet.

[rafaelbald]

@jcsteh: Friend, I apologize for seeming to require something from users or developers here in the forum. I write in Portuguese, I translate in google for English, and I change some words to make myself understood and I end up being dry or rough.

I'm, uh, doing research. And I understood the situation as a solution to a proposal that barred in one detail, for me, software technician.

The experience I had was not only mine, I did tests with users of NVDA, with visual deficiencies, in the combined use of a system with the Alt function in other uses. The repetition of the term "graphic" became redundant or disturbed the reading.

I ended up falling in love with the possibilities, but I freaked out when I found myself on a 2015 topic and had not given the same importance that I gave to the appeal.

It's wonderful that NVDA is open source, and a free softare. And I would very much like to contribute with positive changes and adaptations to the software resulting in advances for digital inclusion. I do not master the Python language, but I master other tools and software. It is less arduous to combine forces of different knowledge to construct new proposals and different paths to follow.

Well, not wanting to stretch, thank you for clarification.

[bhavyashah]

@LeonarddeR Could you please share an update about the progress of this feature's implementation?

[fcurrin]

@LeonarddeR (or anyone else who happens to know) I'm working on a separate but related-enough issue that it would be super helpful if you could let me know what that 3rd file -- "the one that controls which formatting info is spoken" -- ended up being. Was that just speech.py or was it something else? Does it still exist or did that info get moved somewhere else?

[LeonarddeR]

@fcurrin: could you elaborate on what you're trying to achieve? Speech.py and braille.py control how formatting is spoken or brailled, not what formatting info is fetched.

[fcurrin]

@LeonarddeR I'm trying to look at and improve how NVDA conveys information from certain types of data visualizations. Right now the problem I'm running into is that as I navigate through the pieces of those visualizations, the information being spoken suggests that NVDA is processing those pieces as graphics, but the information I'm able to pull from the navigator object classifies them as sections and generally provides less specific information (no name, description, etc.). I'm wondering where else to look to find out how NVDA decides to treat those pieces as graphics and pull out information from them.

[LeonarddeR]

Is this information in a browser you're talking about?

[fcurrin]

Yeah, I've been using Chrome

[derekriemer]

Are you moving the navigator object to the focus first?

[Qchristensen]

Has there been any update on the initial issue (option to disable reporting graphics)?

[LeonarddeR]

I once started with this as a first attempt to contribute to NVDA. It always got stuck at the problem that when reporting of graphics was disabled, they disappeared completely rather than the graphic role not being spoken. As my knowledge about the NVDA source has increased since then, I will dive into this again when time permits.

[bhavyashah]

This issue seems closed with the milestone 2020.2. However, I am currently using NVDA version 2020.2 and am unable to locate this functionality. I have looked in the What's New document, Document Formatting Settings dialog, as well as Input Gestures dialog for clues but to no avail. Please clarify the status of this feature request. @LeonarddeR @michaelDCurran

[feerrenrut]

The wrong milestone was applied. The PR references 2020.3. I'll update it here too.