Re: GDM accessibility sans AT-SPI

[David Bolter <david bolter utoronto ca>]

Hi Brian,

You are doing a great job on gdm and thanks for keeping tabs on us AT 
folks :-)  and ultimately for keeping the end users in mind.

I'm going to mostly repeat my response to a related email since it is 
relevant here.  Here I'm responding to your comment:
"It would be nice if the GOK/Orca commands needed at login time were 
added into the GDM configuration so that working commands would be 
ready-to-use if the user enables a11y in GDM. "

Golly... it has been a while, the last time I added gestures to gdm was 
September 2003. Since then I think (according to the ChangeLog) there 
have been additions and refinements for various reasons by Bill and 
possibly you (Brian).  Here's what I see in gdm2 now:

AccessKeyMouseEvents.in:

# hold right or left mouse button 3 times for 3 seconds each time
#
<Mouse1> 3 3000 10000 @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login 
--access-method=directselection

# we add the right mouse button as it may be the left mouse button
# for a left handed user
#
<Mouse3> 3 3000 10000 @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login 
--access-method=directselection

<Switch1> 1 5000 0 @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login 
--access-method=automaticscanning --scan-action=switch1 
--select-action=switch1
<Switch2> 3 50 3000 @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login 
--access-method=inversescanning --scan-action=switch1 
--select-action=switch2
<Switch3> 3 1000 10000 @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login  
--access-method=automaticscanning --scan-action=switch3 
--select-action=switch3

# Start GOK with direct selection mode.
#
<Control>k  5 1000 10000  @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login 
--access-method=directselection


AccessDwellMouseEvents.in
# GNOME On-Screen Keyboard - support several different options for 
different
# user needs.  Note these gestures all start by moving the mouse into 
the top
# window border.
#
TBLR I 10000    @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login --access-method=dwellselection
TLBR I 10000    @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login 
--access-method=automaticscanning --scan-action=switch1 
--select-action=switch1
TRBL I 10000    @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login --access-method=inversescanning 
--scan-action=switch1 --select-action=switch2
TBRL I 10000    @AT_BINDIR@/gok --login  
--access-method=automaticscanning --scan-action=switch3 
--select-action=switch3

I'm hoping this means that gok will be conjurable by default at login 
(except for the writeable home issue). I don't know what that AT_BINDIR 
magic is... probably means something at the configuration build step?  
Nothing looks too outrageous.  If we had single switch inverse scanning 
the <switch2> gesture would probably want a much higher "hold down" 
time, since scanning normally happens while the switch is held down, but 
two switch scanning is a much different animal so I am OK with it as is.

Please let me know if I've missed the point.

cheers,
David
Brian Cameron wrote:
> David:
>
> In terms of GDM login usage, I'm not sure how well dasher would work.
> I haven't heard of anybody trying it.  I'm guessing dasher would
> probably need some work to make it work well.  As the GDM maintainer,
> I'd be happy to work with people to help get this working if there
> is any interest.
>
> I do know that GOK works okay in login mode, although with the
> annoyance that you have to set up a writable $HOME directory for
> the "gdm" user (see GOK bug 383514).
>
> I recently have worked with the Orca maintainer, and we discovered
> some bugs getting it working with GDM, but the Orca maintainer has
> recently fixed this so the next release of Orca should work fine.
> I understand Gnopernicus works from the login screen okay.
>
> It would be nice if the GOK/Orca commands needed at login time were
> added into the GDM configuration so that working commands would be
> ready-to-use if the user enables a11y in GDM.
>
> Brian
>
>
> > GOK has a dwell access method, where "access method" is an expression 
> > for a "way of navigating and activating keys on the on-screen 
> > keyboard".  Since the assumption is that GOK users are using a 
> > non-core pointing device, off-keyboard mouse clicks are current done 
> > by driving the core mouse pointer around the desktop via specialized 
> > gok keyboard keys.  I think it would be a valuable addition to add a 
> > good Dwell core-pointer user mode to GOK sometime in the future.  
> > Note Dwell users might, as you say want to use a utility like 
> > KMouseTool + Dasher.  I wish we could be informed more by our users 
> > in this regard.
> >
> > cheers,
> > David
> > > > Text to speech would probably be hard to get working with gdmlogin,
> > > > gdmgreeter, gdmsetup, gdmchooser and all pop-up dialogs.  While it 
> > > > might
> > > > be possible to do something that would work okay without AT-SPI, the
> > > > danger is that users might end up in a situation where they don't know
> > > > what is going on with the GUI.  The advantage of AT-SPI is that it
> > > > works better for following the focus and context of what the user is
> > > > doing.     
> > > I agree that an AT-SPI solution is probably the best if you want to 
> > > navigate all the menus of GDM and have read out exactly what they 
> > > contain. I'm just pointing out that adding the spoken line "Welcome 
> > > to <distro>. Please enter your user name." would be relatively 
> > > simple to implement (though the login sound almost serves the same 
> > > purpose).
> > >
> > > Henrik
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > > gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
> > >   
> >
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