Re: [g-a-devel] idea about a11y for the new GDM (was onboard and mousetweaks...)

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Francesco:

> At 8:42 AM -0500 9/21/07, Brian Cameron wrote:
> > Right.  It might make sense to provide configure options so users can
> > configure whether they want GOK on onscreen to be the
> > on-screen-keyboard.  This way distros could easily pick between them
> > at configure time.  This would basically cause the gestures in the
> > keymouse and dwellmouse gesture listeners to get set to the right
> > command to launch each program.
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > Again, the new D-Bus interfaces may make it easier to manage
> > communication between GDM and the session to inform the session
> > what AT programs to launch when the user logs in.
>  
> What about the following approach:
>
> Instead of making GDM launch a specific program, it could indicate what 
> Assistive Technology to launch. A partial list of Assistive Technologies 
> could be:
> (I tried to find one on the Internet, but did not have much success; so 
> here is what currently comes to my mind)
>
> slow keys
> sticky keys
> mouse keys
> onscreen keyboard
> dwelling
> voice recognition
> magnifier
> screenreader
> braille output
> ...
>
> GDM would for example only tell to start the onscreen keyboard, leaving 
> it to a sort of "Preferred Application"-Setting to decide whether to 
> start gok, onboard, xvkb,...
>
> There already is a "Preferred Application"-Settings Panel for the 
> GNOME-session that allows the user to choose what application to launch 
> for visual impairement and what application to launch for mobility 
> impairement. But it would have to be adapted in that case.

One complication about this approach is that the GDM user does not have
currently use GConf where I think these settings are currently set.  I
suppose we could make GDM depend on GConf to get these settings, but
is it worth adding a new dependency for this?  The new D-Bus version
of GDM does use GConf, so perhaps this is a moot question.  :)  But
it probably makes sense to do this work in the D-Bus branch rather
than bothering to add GConf as a dependency in the current stable
version.

> Ubuntu being the only distribution that I have used, I don't know 
> whether such an approach would make sense. It would render GDM 
> independent of specific applications, but it would require a compatible 
> Preferred Application Setting for the GDM Session; and also for the 
> GNOME session, if we want the GNOME session to automatically enable the 
> same Assistive Technologies (screen reader, or onscreen keyboard, or...) 
> as those that wer enabled in the GDM session. (not necessarily the same 
> application, for example the system administrator could set gok as 
> onscreen keyboard during GDM, but a particular user could set the 
> onscreen keyboard preference to use Dasher in his GNOME session)

Right, since GDM GUI's run as the GDM user, the GDM could have different
GConf settings.  Or we could use a different backend aside from GConf if
we didn't want to use that.

> > At the moement, I think it makes the most sense to try to get a11y
> > plugged back into the D-Bus GDM branch and get it working.  Once that
> > is done, it should be easier to talk about how we want to add new a11y
> > features to GDM.
>
> Though D-BUS has a mechanism to start applications, I don't know whether 
> it could also be used in the scenario above; in other words, start a 
> specific Assistive Technology without indicating what application to 
> start. I only wanted to present the idea here. Anyway, the approach 
> indicated in the above quotation will probably be the most practical.

Well, GDM would need to have a program that talks to GConf to figure
out what the preferred applications are.  The GDM GUI programs could
either do this directly, or there could be a helper program that the
GUI programs talk to in order to launch such programs.

> > If you also are interested in enhancing GDM to launch AT programs
> > in more novel ways (e.g. by directly integrating them into GDM), then
> > we should discuss.
>
> I looked for any standards on the Internet about how the different 
> Assistive Technologies should be started, but I was not able to find 
> something really useful yet. Now I wonder if any standards exists, and 
> if they do exist, whether they are Desktop or even OS independent.

I think historically, only gnopernicus, dasher, orca and GOK have
existed.  I believe orca has pretty much replaced gnopernicus.  So
there hasn't been much overlap until now that we have onscreen.

Brian