/LunAdd

Making Thunderbird address book usable with lost eyesight

Primary LanguageC#GNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

LunAdd

Making Thunderbird address book usable with lost eyesight

Scenario: Searching for an entry your address book

Imagine you want to find out the telephone number and check the opening hours of a restaurant, a doctor's.

But, only trouble is, you cannot read any line on your screen and also you cannot easily navigate with your mouse 🖱️or on the touch screen 💻. And you're alone at the moment.

  1. Activate Windows' reading function
  2. Open Thunderbird address book and type Ctrl-Shift-B
  3. Type the first few letters of the name you are searching for
  4. Use Tab Tab and key up or key down
  5. When the speaker announces that the correct entry has been highlighted, then type Return to enter editing mode.
  6. The address card entry is opened.
  7. Type approximately 31 times Tab to reach the phone number. And finally, the reader speaks the number out aloud.
  8. What about the opening hours? 🤔 You give it a try and just dial that number …

→ Let's first take a look behind this: 🔎💻

Windows narrator function

Windows Narrator function

Usability issues

While Narrator is activated, some issues come up like the following examples:

  • In one tab of browser, you write a message, then you open a new tab with your mouse and try to type in an URL or a search term. And you cannot type anything there. Sometimes this works, sometimes it does not. However, using Ctrl-T instead of a mouse click, it works.
  • The narrator may read out the surrounding context menu strips of your browser instead of the content of a web page you have just opened.
  • In bilingual contexts, the narrator language can mix. (As I type this on a German OS, I mark one captital letter and it reads out "Großschreibung W" like "grows-shreebenk double-u"... 🤨)

Using Narrator with Thunderbird

  • Windows screenreading assistance reads aloud any text field you click on. For example if an error message dialog pops up, you hear the content of it.
  • But it does not read aloud any read-only fields of Thunderbird adress book.
    (🤷‍♀️If you found that it actually does, by installing some add-on, a special keyboard shortcut, some hidden (registry) setting im Windows 10-11, just, please let me know! 🤷‍♀️)

LunAdd

Minimum requirements

  • Windows (7 or newer)
  • .NET 6 runtime
  • Thunderbird (almost any recent version)

How it works (when ready)

  • Reads the address book files of your Thunderbird profile
  • Provides read-only access to the database content
  • Navigate by using short key commands to
    • search for entries by name
    • listen to notes and numbers therein
    • faster access to information as compared to tab key navigation