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GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

ckardaris.com

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Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#311

Post by nonethewiser »

abejora wrote: post #289
rootedbox wrote: post #152

I work on ADA a lot for my company. Please put on some headphones, turn on the voice assistant of your OS, put on some blinders, and run your app or website… no mouse, just keyboard. 1. Democracy is about access; make sure everyone has access to your software. 2. The keyboard allows folks with disabilities and power users to fly through your website/app… that being said… the second a tab is off, the person with a dis…

This is something that we have been working on in our app, but to be honest: it is hard. At first we wanted to be completely keyboard centric, but we had to pivot away from it. There is so much to learn in this space. There are small things, like dropping a 'jump to main content anchor' before the navigation so you don't have to tab through the top navigation everytime. But there are also certain pages en layouts whi…

And this is where the conversation gets ugly. Yes accessibility is important. And if you can add it with little additional effort, great. But its not the most important thing when you’re trying to get something off the ground with limited resources.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#312

Post by nonethewiser »

MrVandemar wrote: post #275
stillpointlab wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe AI can be huge here. Things like ADA are often mechanical (adding the correct attributes to the most important page elements). It is the perfect work to audit and fix using agents. It is a business opportunity as well. I worked at a company that paid for an audit before LLMs. There is tremendous cost savings possible here. I also wonder if WebMCP will be the ultimate final incarnation of this.

> It is a business opportunity as well. I worked at a company that paid for an audit before LLMs. There is tremendous cost savings possible here. Do you know one of the most underemployed groups are disabled people? And do you know where a number of disabled people get employment? Disability audits (unsurprisingly they're extremely good at this). Congratulations on recommending further marginalising an extremely marg…

Wait what? We should withhold accessibility features to not marginalize disabled people?

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#313

Post by nonethewiser »

z3c0 wrote: post #238
stillpointlab wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe AI can be huge here. Things like ADA are often mechanical (adding the correct attributes to the most important page elements). It is the perfect work to audit and fix using agents. It is a business opportunity as well. I worked at a company that paid for an audit before LLMs. There is tremendous cost savings possible here. I also wonder if WebMCP will be the ultimate final incarnation of this.

Using AI to close gaps in accessibility is like adding treads to your vehicle because society is too lazy to pave roads.

Well isn’t it like asking the AI to pave roads?

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#314

Post by tptacek »

gblargg wrote: post #308
tptacek wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern GUI frameworks maintain a visual UI tree for on-screen interaction, and a semantic tree for accessibility features. You can find TUI libraries that do things like this, but for most TUIs, if you close your eyes and have the UI read to you, you're going to hear "dash dash dash dash dash dash bracket dash", because the fundamental concept of a TUI is in-band UI signalling. For accessibility (the topic of this su…

I see, modern "GUI" programs aren't just GUI, whereas a TUI is just a GUI.

I don't think that's the right way to frame it. To me, in-band vs. out-of-band signaling is the real dividing line, and has been all the way back to PARC.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#315

Post by Muskwalker »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #301
rootedbox wrote: post #152

I work on ADA a lot for my company. Please put on some headphones, turn on the voice assistant of your OS, put on some blinders, and run your app or website… no mouse, just keyboard. 1. Democracy is about access; make sure everyone has access to your software. 2. The keyboard allows folks with disabilities and power users to fly through your website/app… that being said… the second a tab is off, the person with a dis…

> the second a tab is off Can you explain what you mean by this phrase?

A conventional way to navigate GUIs is by using the Tab key to jump from control to control.

A common way this can fail is if the Tab key traverses through the UI elements in an unexpected order.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#317

Post by gjvc »

jnpnj wrote: post #138

I'm a keyboard based UI lover, but I wonder if the supportive crowd is, and will ever, be too small. Even crude AS400 days keyboard UIs were beyond nice. But then if people want to try and replicate emacs keymaps or vi command composition, better for the dozens of us. ^^

once again, I get to cite the IBM AS/400 CallPath system demonstrated here https://youtu.be/5pY6Xxptp9A?t=2083 which almost brought a tear to at least one viewer's eye

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#318

Post by prmoustache »

oasisaimlessly wrote: post #225
prmoustache wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you introduce the concept of being forced to in the conversation?

Because most people do not get to choose what software they use for working?

Can we stay on topic? We are in the subject of making UIs keyboard drivable.

Re: GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven

#320

Post by Muskwalker »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #43
cyberax wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Some holes"? That's an understatement. There's no option to bring up a context menu with the keyboard. And there are no keyboard accelerators _AT_ _ALL_. Windows will underline the shortcut characters when you hold "alt".

> There's no option to bring up a context menu with the keyboard. That used to be the case but has changed. Since at least macOS 15 the context menu key on typical keyboards is recognized and functions, and on other keyboards it can be opened with Ctrl+Return.

> Since at least macOS 15 the context menu key on typical keyboards is recognized and functions

Apple's adding it to its own keyboards as well, at least on the third-generation Magic Keyboard with number pad (between F13 and forward delete).

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