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Despite the fact that Firefox 3 is still in beta, you can experience and enjoy some of the new accessibility features that are already up and running well in Firefox 3 thanks to the hard work of many people behind the scenes in the Mozilla accessibility communities. The following is a listing of some of the latest accessibility related additions to Firefox 3 that will help to empower people to use, access, and view the Internet the way that they want to.
The Firefox 3 Accessibility Features document is also available in PDF and ODT formats. The content in the document(s) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. Further attribution for the content on this page is listed below.
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Support for GNOME accessibility via ATK/AT-SPI
Firefox 3 introduces accessibility to the web on the GNOME Desktop, running on the Linux or Solaris platforms. For the first time blind and lowvision users can access the rich content the web offers today without having to leave their preferred operating environment or fall back on textbased browsers. Using the Orca screen reader (a standard component of the GNOME desktop) users have access to all content Firefox can render. Orca offers a range of convenience features that allow you to quickly jump to headings, tables, form field elements, and others. Alternative input software such as Jambu uses this technology to allow motor-impaired surfers access to the web. Firefox is the first browser to become accessible in a graphical environment under Linux and paves the way for many other Mozilla-based applications to follow.
Improved accessibility on Windows
Firefox 3 introduces IAccessible2, an extension to the well-known Microsoft Active Accessibility interface that allows screen readers to more tightly integrate with web pages. Through this new technology Firefox can expose more information directly through independent interfaces. Screen readers such as NVDA do not require the use of video interception technology to gain access to all relevant information. Voice dictation software can implement speaking of selected text without having to rely on direct screen manipulation. Once implemented in assistive technologies, IAccessible2 support will allow a broader range of web surfers to gain access to all content that is available on the Internet.
New Full Page Zoom
The new Full Page Zoom feature in Firefox 3 allows web surfers to zoom the whole page, including images and other content besides text. (In previous versions of Firefox only text would be zoomed.) Now a simple switch on the View/Zoom sub menu allows you to switch whether you want the whole page to zoom, or to revert to the old behavior. Vision impaired surfers have different needs, and Firefox 3 addresses those needs by offering both features in one browser, on all supported platforms.
Better support for native themes
Firefox 3 integrates more tightly with your native operating system's theme. If you have set certain accessibility features such as high contrast mode then Firefox will honor these settings and display correctly for you.
Improved support of the ARIA draft standard
Firefox 3 improves upon the implementation of the W3C's ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) draft standard. With ARIA support rich JavaScript widgets used in dynamic Web 2.0 applications can be made as accessible to screen reader users as they are to everyone else. Toolkits such as the Dojo Toolkit are already successfully implementing ARIA and offering a richer Internet applications experience for visually impaired users.
Related Accessibility Content
More built in accessibility features in Firefox.
Firefox assistive technology compatibility for Firefox 2.0 - 3.0.
Advanced Firefox accessibility options - about config: settings.
Information on ARIA - Mozilla Developer Center.
Information on WAI-ARIA - Overview W3C.
Information on IAccessible2 - The Linux Foundation.
Credits
The Firefox 3 accessibility features content on this page and in the downloads is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license and is brought to you by AccessFirefox.org and the Mozilla Foundation, created by Frank Hecker and Marco Zehe. PDF created by Frank Hecker reformatted to ODT by Ken Saunders. This page was authored by Ken Saunders last updated Thursday, March 13, 2008, 8:45:17 AM EST.
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