Modal AccessX warning? [was Re: how to focus on desktop automatically if no windows open?]

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Elijah Newren wrote:..

> Actually, this reminds me of a fairly closely related issue in an
> existing bug, http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=303136:
>
> The sticky and slow keys features get turned on automatically by
> pressing shift 5 times or holding shift down for 8 seconds.  I have
> done both at times without meaning to (especially the later since
> testing out snap moving/resizing in metacity doesn't grab the shift to
> prevent whatever-it-is from turning on the accessiblity stuff; this
> isn't the only case though).  The important point to note is that
>
>  These features get turned on automatically and totally BREAK the keyboard for
>  most users--though a dialog does appear to warn the user about what happened.
>
> This is by necessity, though, as you point out in that bug.  But if
> the user tries to interact with any application they're going to be
> very perplexed (they really should respond to the dialogs first,
> meaning that the dialogs should in some sense be some approximation to
> system modal, as also discussed in that bug).  
How did you 'accidentally' dismiss the dialog, if SlowKeys was indeed 
on?  With the mouse?  (That seems rather willful to me).

With SlowKeys on, it takes a finite amount of time to dismiss this 
dialog.  Because of issues for blind users who trigger this dialog, it 
might be necessary for it to steal focus (ugh!) if indeed it's "somewhat 
modal".  It seems better to me if we can make it more difficult to 
accidentally dismiss the dialog, without making it so hard to dismiss 
that we annoy users who have intentionally invoked the feature.

Bill

> Now these dialogs are
> not expected for anyone who hasn't used these features before; they
> appear out of the blue.  If those windows get focus, they can be
> accidentally dismissed (and indeed, I have done so).  If that happens,
> the user's keyboard is busted and they have no discoverable clue about
> how to fix it.  It's a usability nightmare.  Luckily for me when I
> accidentally triggered this (both the dialog appearing and
> accidentally dismissing it), I had already read that bug report and
> realized after a minute or two what had happened.
>
> The only solution I can think of to prevent this problme that Matthias
> reported, is to make those dialogs "somewhat system modal" (as
> described in the bug) AND to ensure that they do NOT get focus when
> launched (require the user to alt-tab to them).  That sounds like it'd
> break accessibility, according to you.  But it may be a huge problem
> for everyone else without this or some other solution.  Have any
> bright ideas?
>
>