Gnome 2.4, a11y, and the UI freeze

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Gnome Hackers:

Before the last UI freeze on July 9th, I sent out a similar message.
At that time there were 12 UI-related bugs in the accessibility
Stopper/Candidate Stopper list.  The good news is that of the 12
bugs mentioned at that time, 5 are no longer on the list.  The bad
news is that as GNOME accessibility has been tested, many new bugs
have been reported, so there are now 20 UI-related accessibility
Stopper/Candidate Stopper bugs.

Again, I would like to highlight that Gnome 2.4 is close to being the
first release providing a reasonable degree of end-user accessibility
and support for assistive technologies.  There are now 69 Stopper and
Candidate stopper bugs (in GNOME itself, not including in the
AT or framework).  These really need to be addressed in order to make
Gnome 2.4 a usable introduction to accessibility on UNIX.  

Hopefully it will be possible to address as many of these bugs as 
possible before the Hard UI freeze on August 4th.  There are already
patches for some of them.

118564 gnome-panel    Some applets do not have focus indication
83393  libwnck        window list should honor focus line width, but
                      still have two rows
116248 metacity       keynav breaks on window close
106740 metacity       Allow windows offscreen by the amount they are
                      larger than the screen
89838  Yelp           appears not to obey the Gnome 2 theme
105093 control-center Notification/dialog needed when keyboard
                      accessibility turned on via 'shortcuts'
114408 gnome-applets  Icons not part of stock, so has no equivaltents
                      for special (e.g inverse) themes
110939 gnome-pagel    Hide buttons don't get bigger in large print themes
112474 gnome-panel    no keynav for notification area
96802  gnome-print    [PATCH] Print Preview needs accessibility features
109403 gnome-themes   Some themes do not respect application .rc settings
98489  libgnome       Window icons in libwnck apps should respect icon theme
113802 libwnck        Compliance problem for HighContrastInverse theme
109798 metacity       [Ctrl]-Alt-Tab doesn't play nicely with ATs/AccessX
111934 metacity       no window title speech on alt-tab
90219  nautilus       Keynav issue in nautilus
94358  nautilus       There is no initial visible focus when you key nav
                      around Gnome
41811  nautilus       Use of Tab for "select next alphabetically"
                      conflicts with changing widget focus
88767  nautilus       key navigation on the desktop behaves bizzarely
43285  nautilus       Keyboard arrow navigation confusing in icon view


The following 21 Significant, but not Stopper bugs also have UI impact,
so it would be nice to address as many of them as possible:

116892 control-center Default button shown but not working
88021  glade          Should be able to close windows with Ctrl+W
86502  gnome-panel    Active menu item not active after contex menu
                      displayed for panel menu item
99297  gnome-panel    GNOME Menu should post like a menu via F10
92938  libgnome       GnomeIconList needs to support PageUp, PageDown,
                      Home and End keybindings
103312 libgnome       tabbing in gnomeDruid a bit odd
109146 libgnome       gnome-about icon should be themed
102665 libwnck        Unminimizing from window list right-click menu 
                      doesn't focus unminimized window
88853  metacity       Panel does not receive focus after Properties 
                      dialog
102660 metacity       WIndow menu shouldn't be affected by pointer
                      position when popped up from keyboard                      
101659 metacity       need a keyboard shortcut to change the currently
                      focused screen
82609  nautilus       keynav on desktop only cycles once
91547  nautilus       Hack for icon text getting clipped
102655 nautilus       Focus behaviour when no icon name starts with key
                      pressed
41993  nautilus       No way to customize colors or backgrounds with
                      keyboard
94357  nautilus       When navigating directories, focus should
                      initially be in main pane
92850  nautilus       Ctrl+A doesnot select the text in the 'Notes'
                      sidebar
86942  nautilus       editing filename is possible outside of visible
                      area
94618  nautilus       No way to get contextmenu for current folder in
                      list view
112484 vte            PageUp and PageDown keys do not work in
                      gnome-terminal 
90281  Yelp           Keynav issue in Yelp


For reference, the full list of accessibility bugs can be seen here:

  http://gnome.org/~calum/access-bugs.html

Thanks!

Brian