Re: [g-a-devel] startup of a11y tools

["Steve Lee" <steve fullmeasure co uk>]

Excellent. That bugged me if I waited after power up before logging on
but I couldn't repro on demand. I discussed with Ubuntu (Luke?) but we
got nowhere so really pleased it's been fixed. Way cool I have no
other issues with a11y on all the time. ;-)

-- 
Steve Lee
--
Open Source Assistive Technology Software
web: fullmeasure.co.uk
blog: eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog

On 04/06/2008, Willie Walker <William Walker sun com> wrote:
> Now that this bug has been fixed for 2.24, we may have gotten rid of one
>  of the last remaining barriers to enabling a11y by default:
>
>    http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=524263
>
>  Will
>
>
>  Peter Korn wrote:
>  > Hey Willie,
>  >
>  > Regarding #5 below - enabling accessibility on the desktop: I think it
>  > is worth asking the question whether we are ready to have desktop
>  > accessibility support on by default.  It takes more memory, so we
>  > certainly want to allow folks to turn it off if they don't need it.  And
>  > in the past it was more unstable than any of us liked (and so folks who
>  > didn't need it wanted it off by default).  But... it is being used more
>  > and more by folks doing testing of GUIs in general (thanks to dogtail,
>  > et. al.) and it has been getting a lot more testing in general.
>  >
>  > So, maybe for GNOME 2.24 this would be a possibility?
>  >
>  >
>  > Regards,
>  >
>  > Peter Korn
>  > Accessibility Architect,
>  > Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>  >
>  >> I agree that things are a little confusing right now. I'm not sure I've
>  >> fully understood/appreciated the motivation for why things are the way
>  >> they currently are.  This might be a good opportunity to clarify,
>  >> improve, or both. :-)
>  >>
>  >> I think there are a bunch of different problems to think about:
>  >>
>  >> 0) How do I know what accessibility solutions GNOME offers?  These
>  >> include global system preferences (e.g., AccessX and theming) as well as
>  >> assistive technologies (e.g., Orca, GOK, Dasher, MouseTweaks).  One
>  >> solution is word-of-mouth, which should not be discounted as a
>  >> reasonable solution.  Another solution is to read the documentation,
>  >> which we are improving as part of GOPA.  Another is to scour the
>  >> "Applications" menu to see what's there (i.e., the same way I'd stumble
>  >> across an e-mail client or web browser).  Another is to scour the
>  >> "Preferences" menu for assistive technology preferences.  This all seems
>  >> like it could be cleaner.
>  >>
>  >> 1) How do I enable theming and/or AccessX features on the login screen?
>  >>     For theming, I believe the current solution is to offer an optional
>  >> menu on the username/password dialog, which is OK.  For AccessX, the
>  >> current solution is to make sure AccessX is enabled in the X server and
>  >> to rely upon the de facto settings and keyboard gestures built in the
>  >> XKB server extension.  This is marginally OK, and tends to be the
>  >> solution we see on public information kiosks (i.e., you don't get your
>  >> exact personal preferences, but you should get enough to allow you to
>  >> log in).
>  >>
>  >> 2) How do I launch an assistive technology from the login screen?  While
>  >> it requires a one-time sysadmin operation to enable accessible login,
>  >> the current solution of keyboard and/or mouse gestures for gdm seems to
>  >> be reasonable for many users.  Doing so requires a priori knowledge of
>  >> the keyboard/mouse gestures, but perhaps some automatic 'help' content
>  >> generation might be possible?  In addition, a dialog as suggested in the
>  >> kick off for this thread might help some users as long as they do not
>  >> need an assistive technology to access the dialog.
>  >>
>  >> 3) How do I 'carry over' accessibility from the login screen to the
>  >> desktop session?  The current solution is to treat the gdm session and
>  >> the desktop session as separate.  This presents an issue for users until
>  >> they've customized their desktop session for accessibility.  That is,
>  >> the solution is that there is no carry over and that the user needs to
>  >> customize their desktop session for accessibility.
>  >>
>  >> 4) Related to #3, there are at least two solutions for autostarting
>  >> assistive technologies: general autostart for GNOME and a special
>  >> "Accessibility" tab on the preferred applications dialog
>  >> (gnome-default-applications-properties).  The overlap of these has been
>  >> a source of confusion to me.  For simplicity, it has seemed to me that
>  >> the assistive technology itself should be the one to offer the "start me
>  >> on log in" option, and it should do so by just adding itself to the
>  >> general autostart list for GNOME.
>  >>
>  >> 5) Related to #3, how do I enable a11y for the desktop?  The current
>  >> solution is to provide the a11y preferences dialog for this.  IMO, this
>  >> is kind of counterintuitive and is probably something that should
>  >> instead be provided by the tool that requires the a11y infrastructure to
>  >> be enabled (e.g., Orca, GOK, DogTail, etc.).
>  >>
>  >> 6) Related to #2, can I create a customized a11y environment for gdm?
>  >> That is, always set the theme by default, always enable SlowKeys with a
>  >> timeout of 0.75 seconds, etc.  I have no great answer for this since
>  >> I've always been accustomed to the login screen being a shared system
>  >> resource on a multiuser system.  :-(
>  >>
>  >> In any case, I think this is a good discussion.  We definitely have room
>  >> for improvement/clarity.
>  >>
>  >> Will
>  >>
>  >> Brian Cameron wrote:
>  >>
>  >>> Matthias:
>  >>>
>  >>>
>  >>>> Imo an approach like the one taken by Jon McCann in the new gdm a11y
>  >>>> dialog (see  http://live.gnome.org/GDM/Screenshots ) is much more
>  >>>> straightforward and we should look at doing something similar inside
>  >>>> the session.
>  >>>>
>  >>> I agree that the new dialog is a big step forward.  It is a good idea
>  >>> to provide a user-visible dialog where users can select the a11y
>  >>> programs they wish to run.
>  >>>
>  >>> However, this interface is lacking because many users with disabilities
>  >>> simply cannot navigate the GUI to begin with unless the a11y programs
>  >>> they need are already running.  A chicken-and-egg problem.
>  >>>
>  >>> I know the new GDM does support the ability to always launch (autostart)
>  >>> additional programs, which can be used to start a11y programs along with
>  >>> GDM.  This perhaps meets the needs of a single-user desktop.  However,
>  >>> this doesn't work well on multi-user desktops or terminal server
>  >>> settings where some users may need text-to-speech, others may need
>  >>> magnification, and others might not need any additional a11y programs to
>  >>> be running.
>  >>>
>  >>> I think this "support a11y on multi-user servers for users who may have
>  >>> different a11y needs" is an important use case that should be addressed
>  >>> before a general solution be implemented into the GNOME desktop.
>  >>>
>  >>> Brian
>  >>> _______________________________________________
>  >>> Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list
>  >>> Gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org
>  >>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
>  >>>
>  >> _______________________________________________
>  >> Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list
>  >> Gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org
>  >> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
>  >>
>  >
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list
>  Gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org
>  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
>




On 05/06/2008, Jason White <jason jasonjgw net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 04:28:04PM -0400, Willie Walker wrote:
>  > Now that this bug has been fixed for 2.24, we may have gotten rid of one
>  > of the last remaining barriers to enabling a11y by default:
>  >
>  >    http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=524263
>
>
> This is great news. Thanks to all involved.
>
>  This bug has been annoying me more than any other, since my laptop quite often
>  fails to load the AT-SPI registry on time, and all I can do is type
>  ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the X server and try again.
>
>  The machine isn't particularly slow (a 1.8ghz AMD Athlon64 CPU, 1gb RAM), but
>  it uses CPU frequency scaling, and the hard drive is probably only a 5400 rpm
>  IDE disk.
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list
>  Gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org
>  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
>


-- 
Steve Lee
--
Open Source Assistive Technology Software
web: fullmeasure.co.uk
blog: eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog