Re: Unity Update

[Alan Coopersmith <alan coopersmith oracle com>]

Michael Meeks wrote:
> Hi Alan,
> 
> On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 07:23 -0800, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>> How about "Are there any a11y implications in the plan to move
>> Unity from X11 to Wayland?"   (I really have no idea if Wayland
>> provides any of the underlying infrastructure needed or not.)
> 
> 	The move to wayland will not be too sudden I suspect ;-) the people
> working on it say it is not ready yet. Also - I don't really see Unity
> causing much grief for the atk/at-spi2 side of a11y (FWIW) - though yje
> WM piece will need love.

Oh, I'm sure it will take time, but early in the process is the best
time to make sure a11y requirements are baked in, before people have
developed too many dependencies on things you may have to change to
better accommodate it in the design.

Having been involved in some of the work to try to bolt on additional a11y
infrastructure to the X server in the early GNOME 2.0 timeframe, I know it's
not easy to add when you didn't design for it upfront.

For instance, some things to think about:

 - It would be nice if the default Wayland compositor could handle all the
   screen magnification, contrast adjustment, color inversion, etc.
   requirements instead of having to have a separate a11y compositor - what
   are the list of absolute requirements and nice-to-have bonus features and
   what does Wayland need to provide for those?

 - Input handling - things like mouse keys, slow keys, etc. that XKB takes
   care of in the X server - how will that work in Wayland?  How will those
   be configured?  What are the things the Wayland compositor has to support
   in input event processing?

 - On-screen keyboard & similar accessibility helpers - how do they feed
   input events back into Wayland?   What support does Wayland need to provide
   for them?

 - Is there stuff that was just too hard to do in the X11 model that would
   be good for users to have and easier if starting with a clean sheet design
   like Wayland?

I'm not suggesting this team has all the answers, just that you are probably
the best folks to think up the questions and start working with the Wayland
designers on lists of requirements and wish-lists.

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-        alan coopersmith oracle com
	 Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System