Audacity Forum

My greatest problem is that I have no idea, where I am when I am navigating through the labels because the screenreader does not read the current label. Thus I have to press play to be oriented. I also do not know if I am actually in the edit or select mode. In contrast, the editor menu is fairly easy to navigate but what should the time boxes be good for, when I can't play the label?
Additionally, all label-manipulations that can be done per mouse (dragging of the different handles) should also be inplemented with keyboard shortcuts. These could be the same that are used for the selection expansion/shrinking and the above mentioned playing of the current position(as long as the label track has focus).
However, that's idle talk, as long as I have no feedback from the program. For me, those labels are pretty useless.
It's much easier to take the track apart (cursor to end and ctrl-i repeatedly), to edit the clips one by one.
For a CD or mp3 playlist, the tracks are of course aligned to zero and named accordingly.

Robert J. H. wrote:My greatest problem is that I have no idea, where I am when I am navigating through the labels because the screenreader does not read the current label. Thus I have to press play to be oriented.

Exactly - and as soon as you come out of the label so that you can play (from the keyboard), focus on the label is lost and there is no way back to it without tabbing through the labels from the start.

Robert J. H. wrote:I also do not know if I am actually in the edit or select mode.

Does your screen reader read the text in labels correctly?

Robert J. H. wrote:In contrast, the editor menu is fairly easy to navigate but what should the time boxes be good for, when I can't play the label?

That could perhaps be remedied by providing a "Play" button as an extra column for each label - tab across to the play button and press the spacebar.

In Track view, The screen reader is silent like a door nail is dead, no matter which mode.
Reading out the focused object returns only the name of the track and its status. The only thing you can do is tab through and press space bar and hope that you don't delete any text along the way.
On the other Hand, in the editor, all labels are correctly read out and you can enter a new name. Unfortunately, you can't enter the edit mode without deleting the whole content, whereas the time tabs can't be manipulated at all.
It would be preferable to have an shortcut for the edit mode (In Windows, that's usually F2). When this key is pressed, the text is highlighted and you can delete it or navigate with the arrow keys to a position you want to correct. Enter brings you back to the normal mode where pressing a common key won't automatically delete all content but execute the usual command:

• "Space" plays the label
• "c" plays one s before and after the label.
• "z" finds the zero crossings.

The F2 key let's you also modify the start and end times with the usual behaviour how it is known from the other dialog boxes (including context menu for the time format). The non-numeric keys should still be able to play the selection or it's borders (since you do not want to leave this mode to do this).
These are merely basic functions. As soon as this behaviour is achieved, we can start to think about special tasks for labels, such as multiple selecting, grouping, joining, spliting snaping and so on.
I'm afraid that there won't much improvement in this direction, at least not in my time.

Robert J. H. wrote:It would be preferable to have an shortcut for the edit mode (In Windows, that's usually F2). When this key is pressed, the text is highlighted and you can delete it or navigate with the arrow keys to a position you want to correct

Are you saying that does not work on your machine?

Robert J. H. wrote:the time tabs can't be manipulated at all

To manipulate the spin boxes (TimeText controls) also requires F2.


Gale

Thanks a lot, Gayle, again something learnt.
(Why didn't I simply try the F2 key, maybe to much pessimism).
Is that anywhere written?
In the help I've found only the following:

You can use the Arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate easily left, right, up or down between the table cells.
Opening the Start Time or End Time cell for editing lets you use Left or Right arrow keys to move between selected time digits, then Up or Down arrow keys to increment the digits. Alternatively you can type the number wanted for the selected digit.

In my mind, I've connected the "opening ... for editing" with a mouse click or pressing enter, sorry.
If you can now provide the key for playback, my day will be saved...

Robert J. H. wrote:(Why didn't I simply try the F2 key, maybe to much pessimism).
Is that anywhere written?In the help I've found only the following:

You can use the Arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate easily left, right, up or down between the table cells.
Opening the Start Time or End Time cell for editing lets you use Left or Right arrow keys to move between selected time digits, then Up or Down arrow keys to increment the digits. Alternatively you can type the number wanted for the selected digit.

In my mind, I've connected the "opening ... for editing" with a mouse click or pressing enter, sorry.

I've added text to the Manual:

To open a cell for editing, use F2 or double-click.

The dialogue for Labels Editor has similar text at the top advising to use F2, which the sighted user can see in the dialogue (and in the image of the dialogue in the Manual).

INSERT + B in NVDA (read foreground text) reads out that text advising to use F2. Perhaps your reader has a similar command.


Gale

Thanks for adding the text, Gayle.
I am currently using NVDA.
Insert +b reads only "Static Text" (+ the rest of the dialog)
There still seems to be a bug in NVDA, since the text is obviously accessible to the program: That's the information for the dialog itself, but it is fairly complicated to get this text.
Normally, one should be able to move through a dialog with the navigator commands(insert + numpad 4/6). All elements are reachable but this text.
By moving up a level (insert + numpad 8) I am landing on the desktop. By going done again, and by cycling through the different "windows" (start button running programs...) I finally get to the still opened Dialog, where all information now can be read (not by insert b but by the numpad commands 7, 8 and 9 "read line under Nvda cursor".
That's where I got the protokoll information from. There's seems something amiss with the parent/children hirarchy.
I assume it is the same problem that occurs in the effect dialog boxes.
It may be that I am the only one with this issue.
JAWS always reads these "static texts" properly and automatically but I don't use it on this machine.

I have NVDA 2012v3. I just INSERT + B in Edit Labels to hear the text about F2 then press INSERT again to stop it talking.


Gale

Doesn't work on my machine (with NVDA 2012.3.1, Audacity 2.0.2 and windows 7 64)
It may well be that the problem is caused by the video card. That's too bad.