Accessibility issues in gnome 3.14

[Peter Vágner <pvdeejay gmail com>]

Hello,
I think we need to file some accessibility related bugs against gnome 3.14.

gnome-control-center
region pannel
Accessibility experience is confusing in many areas and some parts are 
not presented by orca.
When the Regions and language pannel is open it is rather difficult to 
guess which UI controls are related. First focusable element is a 
language item. It is possible to use either tab key or down arrow key to 
move to the formats item. When pressing the tab key while formats item 
has focus the button Options gains the system focus. Which item is 
supposed the button Options bring options for? Formats, language or 
both? If both depending on the selection then it's extremelly 
inconvenient to select language and use the keyboard to activate options 
button. If items language and formats should be interpreted as one list 
pressing tab key while either of these is in focus should move focus out 
of the list.
Pressing the enter key when on the language or formats items causes a 
new dialog to open which suggest Options button is completelly unrelated 
to these two. In fact by default the presentation style suggests 
language and formats items are parts of a list it turns out these are 
individual items thus my previous assumption that tab key should move 
out of list does not well suits here and the correct behaviour is fine. 
It should be considered whether these shouldn't be given some different 
accessibility role e.g. plain buttons would definatelly clear that for 
me instantly and I would not have to press the enter key on them in 
order to figure out whether Options button is related to those entries 
or not.
As language or formats items are activated a new dialog is displayed 
with Cancel and Finish buttons. This also includes the list of all 
available languages or formats depending on what item has been activated 
previously. When pressing the enter or space bar while one of these list 
items are focused caused nothing to happen. It is verry difficult to 
press the Finnish button and keep the first item selected as moving to 
other controls by pressing the tab key causes not to immediatelly move 
out of list. This would be better changed because these entries are for 
sure part of a single list.

Back to the initial screen of Regions and languages pannel. When 
navigating around by pressing the tab key there is a list of input 
sources. Again this appears to be a list of items thus pressing tab key 
while one of the items are selected should move focus out of the list. 
Imagine if there were 30 items in this list we would have to press the 
tab key 30 times in order to reach the unlabelled buttons, Add, Remove 
and the third button I even don't managed to figure out what it does.
When the Add button is pressed there is a list of a few items perhaps 
that coresponds with languages and formats found on the system. However 
pressing enter or the spacebar when one of these has the focus causes 
nothing noticeable to happen. Last item is an unlabelled item which 
brings search when pressed. There is already a bug #737344  which says 
searching for new keyboard layout is slow but again until something is 
typed to an edit field no results are presented by orca. Perhaps The 
first list where there are only a few items coresponding with system 
locales should serve as a filter and some layouts have to be displayed 
when one of these items are selected. Again it is not possible to 
navigate comfortably out of that list to preserve the selection thus 
this is my pure guess how I think this window should be operated.

Now see another view of the gnome-control-center Displays this time.
In there there is a list of all displays currently attached to the 
system. I don't currently have an external display connected to my 
laptop but I am afraid this list may suffer from the rather often seen 
issue I am tallking about here that tab key does not cause the system 
focus to shift out of the list.
When the enter key is pressed on an item coresponding to a working 
display it is possible to configure display resolution, how the display 
should be positioned, rotated, mirrored etc. However The control's 
relation ships are badly broken in this window and I can't figure at all 
what relates to what. The fact there are many unlabelled buttons even 
adds a bit more confusion to the overal experience.
You as a sighted powerfull developer might think this is something 
visually disabled people don't need to touch at all however I hope there 
is enough willingness to reconsider this. Sighted user has a chance to 
verify the settings because he can immediatelly see how the displays are 
arranged, how windows are displayed over multiple displays etc. Now in 
order to try being modern and try to integrate well into powerfull HTPC 
style setup having multiple displays connected into a computer is 
widelly used feature. If something is reconfigured on a HDMI connected 
TV or when a new display is connected my previous setup is reset and 
kind of a new profile is created in the monitors.xml file. That's nice 
to have feature however I have already found my-self being angry using 
xrandr, wmctrl and other similar tools from the command line to override 
the current setup so I am able to keep working on the primary display by 
using casual stuff such as web browsing, emailing etc and at the same 
time I can have full screen video or images displayed at the second 
display connected via HDMI. If I were sighted I would be able to set 
this in a second through this gnome-control-center pannel. As I am not 
lucky enough and I am blind I have to resort to editing monitor.xml file 
by hand, verifying configuration by examining output of various other 
utilities, restarting GDM, switching back and forth between text console 
and graphical UI and similar.

The list issues I am mainly tallking about here can also be seen in the 
privacy pannel.

When the controls are not clearly labelled or when a relations are not 
verry obvious I like to resort to so called flat review orca feature. I 
have to note that flat review is not working at a lot of places within 
gnome-control-center e.g. Notifications, region and language, privacy, 
keyboard and a lot more.

I am not screaming for this to be fixed as soon as possible I know we 
are in an opensource world. I am slowly tinkering with the system when I 
do have some spare time and I think occassionally I might be able to 
find solution to some of these issues and try to submit fixes. E.G. the 
following gnome-shell issue #729603.
The list issue I am tallking a lot about here can also be seen in other 
modern gnome apps such as gnome contacts, gnome documents and even maybe 
others. I am afraid this might be a GTK specific issue with one of the 
new controls. I am not really sure what to enter as a bug description, 
where to report it etc. It's why I am starting this discussion.
I expect other visually disabled gnome users and fanns to add more 
experiences like this so we can better pinpoint possible issues and I 
expect some knowledgeable person from the a11y team to try to understand 
what's going on, give some examples on how some of these can be 
addressed. As I said If I will manage it on my own, I am happy to try 
submitting some little patches.

Thanks for listening

Greetings

Peter