Suggestions for developers of Thunderbird and other Mozilla apps

I have learned as much as possible about Thunderbird 3.0 from various
sources on the web, and have developed a set of JAWS scripts to improve
its usability for people who operate with that screen reader, available
with an executable installer at
http://EmpowermentZone.com/tb_scr.exe

or with a zip archive for a manual install (currently needed for Win64)
at
http://EmpowermentZone.com/tb_scr.zip


The following is a set of suggestions that I hope Mozilla developers can
implement in the next version of Thunderbird.  If it is better to
include such suggestions within the Bugzilla tracking system, I hope
someone familiar with that system can help transfer them accordingly.

In general, TB3 meets a minimum baseline of accessibility in terms of
keyboard operability and screen reader output via MSAA.  Much can be
done, however, to make the screen reader experience more efficient and
smooth.

* Include all relevant controls in the navigation sequence of dialogs.
In particular, make the Add button focusable in the subdialog of Account
Settings after one chooses the Actions button.

* Include a keyboard way of changing the sequence of columns in the
message list.  Currently, this can only be done with mouse drag-and-drop
operations.

  * Include hotkeys to go directly to common folders, including Inbox,
Sent, Trash, and Junk.  My scripts try to implement Control+Shift+Letter
combinations for this, e.g., Control+Shift+I for Inbox.  The scripts use
the JAWS off screen model (OSM) to find the folder name, route the mouse
pointer to it, and then click.  This works sometimes but is not reliable
because the folder name is not always visible, or the word appears in
another context than being the clickable folder name.

* Use a delimiter character other than a space to seperate columnar data
in the MSAA AccName property of a message list item.  It is difficult to
reliably parse out, say, the subject from the sender from the recipient
of a message when only spaces seperate each data item.  I suggest a Tab
character as a delimiter (\t).



* Ensure that all relevant message status information is available in
MSAA properties.  For example, attachment data is not currently
available via MSAA.

* In message composition mode, use seperate edit controls for the To,
CC, and BCC fields.  Currently, one control is used with a preceding
ComboBox to select whether To, CC, or BCC, is applicable.  This
arrangement is quite inefficient from a keyboard standpoint.  Much
better would be seperate controls with initial letter hotkeys, e.g.,
Alt+T for the To field, Alt+C for the CC field, and Alt+B for the BCC
field.  Alt+S does currently work for focusing on the Subject field.  My
scripts also try to implement Alt+M for the message body.

* Avoid using the same hotke for completely different tasks.  For
example, F7 is currently used for caret-browsing mode when reading a
message, and for the spell checker when writing a message.

* Prevent Control+W from exiting the application.  Currently, one can
inadvertently exit Thunderbird by pressing Control+W to close a message
when only one tab is open.

* Include quality documentation with Thunderbird, e.g., available from
the Help menu and with the F1 key.  The lack of TB documentation is a
usability barrier generally, and an accessibility barrier to people with
disabilities.  A visually obvious behavior of the application may be
completely unknown to us without documentation that describes how the
program responds in a given context to input events or setting changes.
Also include a Help button in the Account Settings and Options dialogs
(like Firefox has).

I hope these suggestions are helpful in a team effort to make
Thunderbird and other Mozilla applications more productive to users with
disabilities.

Regards,
Jamal