2.4 New Accessibility Features

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Hi Folks:

In addition to the proposed new modules (in the "cvs modules" sense) for
accessibility:

	gnome-mag
	gnome-speech
	gok
	gnopernicus

there are a few significant UI features which we are planning to add in
response to significant user need.  

It's been brought to our attention that some of these features, even
though they are intended for existing CVS modules, might need to be
called out in their own right in GEP-11.  Since we took the "new
modules" list rather literally, despite having previously mentioned
these features on-list we didn't worry about the fact that they didn't
turn up in GEP-11.

[A previous thread starts here:]
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-April/msg00621.html

(Of the features mentioned in that thread, the only one that's not yet
coded is the Wizard which I think we'll drop for now unless someone
comes to the rescue this week; the accessx-status applet is the least
complete, see below, but the others are feature-complete except for icon
refinement.)

But Glynn thinks perhaps R-T would like to see at least some of them on
the list; so here's a list of the most significant new bits.  All of
these have substantially-completed code, but a couple are in bugzilla as
patches rather than CVS since we've been awaiting maintainer feedback.

* gnome-themes: new gtk-engine for HC themes.  Working, 
	better than the default engine for visibility, possibly
	a few minor bugs/regressions which are fixable pre-2.4.
	Already in CVS.

* gnome-control-center: Two new capplets for the 'accessibility' menu
	o Assistive Technology Support (aka gnome-at-properties);
		provides UI for toggling the 'accessibility' gconf key.
		also provides shortcut UI for adding ATs to the user's 		session,
which is otherwise difficult or impossible from the 
		session menus.
	o GNOME System Bell Properties (aka gnome-bell-properties)
		provides UI for toggling audio bell
			(important for AccessX users who need key 			feedback since the audio
feedback can 
			drive neighbors nuts otherwise)	
`		provides UI for configuring "visual bell" feature.

	This code is in a bugzilla patch for bug #113307.
        http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113307
	The icons are purely placeholders at this time, Calum
	is building better ones for these capplets.

* gnome-applets:

	o Applet to show accessx status (sticky keys status, etc.)

	Calum discussed the UI at length on d-d-l, the icons are not yet
	final.  We went with an applet rather than a notification
	doohickey since the notification icons at the moment need to 
	be square-ish, etc. and for other technical reasons.
	I have written a version of the applet *without the icons*, 
	which just displays stuff in a GtkLabel, into 
	which we'll put the icons in the next few days - so this is
	far from vaporware, but you'd do better to look at Calum's 
	notes to see how the final applet will look.  The
	notification/listener and update code (i.e. most of the  
        internals) are written.  The relevant bug is 98488
	which is against control-center, but possibly this code should
	go into gnome-applets instead.  At the moment it's a separate
	module on my machine, I attached a standalone gzipped
	tarball to the bugzilla bug, rather than a patch:
	http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98488
	
I had thought that, hearing no objection or comment, we would just try
to get these features done a couple of weeks before feature-freeze to
give time for feedback and adjustments.  However if you think these
features (at least, all but the first one which is already committed)
need to be in GEP-11 then please add them to the list of proposed
"modules"!

It might also be worth looking at Calum's accessibility bug list 
http://www.gnome.org/~calum/access-bugs.html
to see if any of the "Urgent" bugs require feature-ish fixes, so we can
try to expedite them before feature freeze.  We don't want to get caught
post-freeze with good accessibility patches that we can't apply.

thanks

Bill