Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility

From: Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>
To: "'kendell clark'" <coffeekingms gmail com>, "'Vincenzo Rubano'" <vincenzo rubano studio unibo it>, "'Keith Hinton'" <keithint1234 gmail com>
Cc: 'orca-list' <orca-list gnome org>
Subject: Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2015 17:45:03 -0500

Audio production is something of a tender spot for me.  I did some pretty extensive digging a few years ago 
on the subject and my findings were frankly disappointing.  

Fact:  Historically, one of the vocations at which blind people have exceled has been music.  Some noteworthy 
blind musicians the reader may be acquainted with include Homer, Ah Bing, Francesco Da Milano, Joaquin 
Rodrigo, Andrea Bocelli, Ray Charles, Stevie wonder, Jeff Healey, José Feliciano and, last but certainly not 
by a million miles least Monsieur Louis Braille.  

Now then, the question was posed by a blind musician from the eastern U.S. seaboard if there were anything 
accessible and comparable to Sound Forge and Audition in Windows on the Linux platform.  These are 
professional quality pieces of music software.  I found two of them which most closely matched up in features 
and capabilities.  These were Ardour built on GTK and Rosegarden built on QT.  Be it know that these far 
outstrip something like Jokosh and Audacity in what they can do as they target professional musicians as 
opposed to people dabbling in the odd sound editing project or two.  Neither one of these pieces of software 
were accessible.  Neither was Lilipond or fluidsynth.  So, at this time, there is no accessible way for the 
average blind musical professional to work with any score editing, mixing or sound studio type software in so 
far as I know.  It's a real bummer.  I would *Love* to be proven wrong on this one so, please be my guest.

Alex M

-----Original Message-----
From: kendell clark [mailto:coffeekingms gmail com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 4:58 PM
To: Alex Midence; 'Vincenzo Rubano'; 'Keith Hinton'
Cc: 'orca-list'
Subject: Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

hi
Impress is an absolutely valid point. I don't know why orca works with it so poorly, but if I had to guess, 
I'd say a combination of poor libreoffice accessibility support and no orca specific code for it. If no one 
has filed a bug against impress, I'll go ahead and do that now.
As for being able to do things on linux you could do on windows, this is valid, up to a point. The people 
that usually make statements like this, or at least the people I deal with who do,  often mean, "I want to do 
the same thing on linux that I did on windows, using the same programs and doing it the exact same way I used 
to do it on windows".
Which means, for example, when you tell them that there's no mush z in linux but that there's tintin and a 
sound pack for alter aeon, "that's too hard. I want a gui installer that does all of this for me because 
that's how windows does it. If I can't have that then linux sucks and I won't use it." Pdf files is another 
area where linux needs improving. This is supposed to improve greatly in gnome 3.18, but I haven't tested it 
yet. Then again, the only accessible pdf reader on windows is adobe's own, so while it might work better 
there, you are limited in what programs you can use. None of the open source or alternative pdf readers in 
windows as far as I know work with any screen readers. I'd argue that linux is accessible enough for 
beginner, intermediate, and advanced work, depending of course on the kind of work you do. Audio production 
is one area where blind people cling to windows. There are people on this list who know a lot more about this 
than I do but if windows wins out in this area then we need to buck up and fix it. For what little audio work 
I do, download from youtube, converting and editing files and audio metadata, linux works absolutely fine and 
there are gui options for all. As for the crackling, this is a well known issue. I understand it has 
something to do with speech-dispatcher's use of the pulse audio api. Luke and jeremy ... something, can't 
remember his last name, are actively working to fix this, which should be available in either a new 
speech-dispatcher 0.8 release or a 0.9 release, I'm not sure yet. But it's definitely known and being worked 
on. I'd say this in closing. No matter which platform you use, linux, windows, ios, android, osx, there are 
going to be areas where accessibility is great and those dark corners where it could be better. It's just the 
nature of accessibility. Linux wins out in my opinion mostly due to it's open source model, it's lack of 
activation and it's ease of maintenance. I can throw a distro on a usb drive and boot it on any computer and 
have a live working environment. I can either use that as is or install it.
I understand osx can do something similar, I've never used it. I say linux wins out because it's not limited 
to a particular brand of computer by license agreements. My two scents.
Thanks
Kendell clark


Alex Midence wrote:

I don't know.  I think comparing how well something can be accessibly 
accomplished in Linux to how well that same task can be done in 
Windows is a valid exercise as long as you don't make sweeping 
statements like "The overall accessibility experience in Linux sucks 
compared to Windows."  If you are used to being able to do X on one 
platform, it is natural to feel you should be able to do it on another 
just as accessibly and with as little extra effort on your part as you 
had to expend on the other platform.

With Linux, my main gripe is presentations.  I rely on them every day 
at work since I'm a trainer and they are something of a lifeblood for 
me.  In Windows, we use PowerPoint which Window Eyes, in particular, 
works extremely well with.  Jaws does OK but Window Eyes is absolutely 
outstanding with it.  I can't say the same with Orca and Impress.  If 
I got hired somewhere and their company policy was to have all their 
class presentations in Impress format, I'd be in deep trouble.  I'd 
have to argue for letting me use Beamer which is a part of LaTEx.  I'd 
still be in hot water because the output is to PDF's which Evince 
handles only rudimentarily in regular documents and very poorly in pdf 
slides.  I'd have to see about having them let me make a very basic 
Windows vm so I can use Adobe while that all gets sorted out.  I 
understand there's a way to do this sort of thing with html and 
javascript but I don't know it yet.  So, it would be natural for 
someone like me to wish that presentations were as easy to do 
accessibly in Linux as they are in windows where you don't  have to 
learn a complex markup language to get the job done.

Just an example. Alex M

-----Original Message----- From: orca-list 
[mailto:orca-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of kendell clark
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 4:22 PM To: Vincenzo Rubano; Keith 
Hinton Cc: orca-list Subject: Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux 
Accessibility

hi This is partly valid and partly not. The stuff about unlabeled 
controls in gnome is absolutely spot on. While it's gotten quite a bit 
better in the newest gnome, version 3.16, there are still areas in the 
control center that aren't labeled well. I've filed bugs against these 
parts and we're just waiting for fixes. Mate is also pretty 
accessible. You *do* get access to the applets. It is a bit weird 
though, and I don't really understand what's causing orca to not like 
the panel very much. I'd have to say a combination of old gnome 2 code 
in orca that mate uses and old accessibility code on mate's part. Both 
can be fixed. We *need* more users. I'm rather tired of people picking 
on linux's accessibility issues as if they were written in stone. Not 
that you've done that. The issues can get fixed. It's going to take 
more orca users doing what I and joanie do. File bugs, test stuff, 
report what doesn't work. I've not seen much of this here, though 
granted not everyone has the luxury of sitting around all day like I 
do. Gnome was part of GSOC this year and they had a couple of people 
hacking on java atk wrapper specifically to bring java accessibility 
up to snuff.
Joanie has dropped a couple of hints that gnome 3.18's accessibility 
will be much better, so I believe her, although I haven't been able to 
find anything on that. I've used windows, including the latest version 
from redmond. To be completely blunt, if this is the best ms can put 
out, we've got it made. The accessibility issues will no doubt get 
fixed with windows updates, but if this were my first impression of 
windows I'd be saying it's accessibility were going backwards. Tested 
with the latest windows
10 RTM build. We just need to focus on makeing an already great OS 
even greater. We do this by filing bugs, testing features. We don't do 
it by looking at what windows does or does not do better and 
constantly comparing the two. I'm guilty of this myself sometimes, 
particularly when I feel close to burning out. That's my two scents 
Thanks Kendell clark


Vincenzo Rubano wrote:

Hi Keith,

I know this message will make some people angry, but I want to share 
my point of view on linux accessibility. This came out rather long, 
so enjoy a cup of coffee while reading. ;)

First off, when talking about linux accessibility I like to clarify 
what I think is an important aspect: fragmentation is a problem for 
accessibility. Since every piece of software can be configured with 
different options/different library versions/different parameters and 
each distribution can make a lot of decisions on these aspects, it’s 
hard to say what’s accessible and what is not. As you can see, there 
are too many variables to consider. Too many for my tastes…

This being said, we have to distinguish between command line 
accessibility and GUI accessibility. If we talk about command line, 
we’re in a great situation. Just choose a kernel which is optimally 
configured for speakup (i.e. the debian kernel starting from version 
3.2 or the Talking Arch one are two examples that I’ve used). If we 
talk about GUI, well, that’s another story…

The only “accessible” desktops out of the box are Gnome and Mate. 
Please note the quotes wrapping the “accessible” word, their meanings 
will be clearer after the lines below. Gnome works, but there are 
some areas of the Gnome-Shell that are completely inaccessible for 
Orca. Gnome Control Center has unlabeled controls scattered here and 
there with some of them being not usable at all and Gnome Tweak Tool 
has the same issues plus a few focus-related ones. Evolution, the 
default mail client included in Gnome, is completely inaccessible 
(1). There are other Gnome pieces that are not accessible, but my 
memory does not recall their names. Tested with Gnome 3.14.3 and Orca 
3.14.3.
Mate is a Gnome 2 fork. It is accessible, if you mind not having 
access to most of the applets (i.e. the applet to control wifi
connections) and having unreliable multiple file selection due to 
Orca not announcing properly when an item is selected or not. Add a 
few other issues here and there and that’s the Mate situation.
Tested with Mate 1.8.* and Orca 3.14.3.

Libreoffice/openoffice are the only complete office suites for linux. 
Saying that they’re accessible is really an abuse of the word, 
though. Libreoffice Writer can be used to some degree, but if you 
need to have complex formatting, multiple tables with many rows and 
columns and form controls embedded in your document, then be prepared 
to a lot of accessibility issues. And remember that you won’t be able 
to use structural navigation within LibreOffice documents due to a 
Libreoffice bug sitting in their queue for years. Impress, Calc, Base 
and Math have even more severe and critical accessibility issues that 
make them far from being usable if you’re blind. Tested with 
Libreoffice 4.3.* and
4.4.* with Orca 3.14.3. Notice that LibreOffice seems to run a little 
bit better under Debian than under Ubuntu, but don’t ask me the 
reason why.

The only decent way to browse the Web with orca is using Firefox. 
There’s not too much to complain about that, if you don’t mind having 
a lot of troubles with complex applications such as webmails and with 
websites that often refresh the page via ajax. Also, make sure to 
enable the Orca configuration option to show one control for each 
line in a web page, otherwise you’ll have a lot of latency whenever 
you get to a line with more than
10 controls (i.e. 10 radio buttons). (2)

Let’s spend some words on the Speech Dispatcher/Alsa/PulseAudio 
thing. Wow, too many parties involved, don’t you think so?
Anyways, I’ve always had two issues: 1. From the SpeechDispatcher 
configuration, enable a module which is not present in 
SpeechDispatcher (i.e module for Pico under a Debian installation). 
Restart the SpeechDispatcher service and… Voilà, no speech at all! 
And no way to recover, unless you can remotely access your machine or 
you have a Braille display or sighted assistance to rely on. Tested 
with Debian Wheezy/Jessie. 2. While the computer is of, plug in your 
headsets. Turn on the computer.
Unplug the headsets: you would expect audio to come from your laptop 
speakers, but you won’t get audio output at all. Plug in again your 
headsets and… Audio is there. Tested under Debian Wheezy/Jessie and 
Ubuntu-Mate 14.04.

Finally, let me spend some words on development. Accessibility bugs 
that can be fixed/worked around in Orca get fixed rather quickly, but 
the problem is that those fixes get to end users too slowly for my 
tastes. If a bug is in the accessibility infrastructure (i.e. 
pyatspi, atspi, atk and others), then they’ll be sitting there for 
years. Not to mention bugs within Gnome itself or third party 
apps/frameworks (LibreOffice and Qt just to mention two examples).

(1): Evolution accessibility is improving from what I can read, but 
currently it’s tricky to get to the message body after you open it. 
There is thunderbird as an alternative, but if you are like me and 
use more than 5 different mailboxes with 20+ different folders and 
thousands of messages, you won't find Thunderbird a great piece of 
software to work with in terms of accessibility.

(2) Recently, there has been some work to improve these aspects in 
Orca. We’ll see them in a 3.18 or something like that release, so be 
patient if you need some serious accessibility support within web 
content.

Vincenzo.

Il giorno 05 ago 2015, alle ore 08:30, Keith Hinton 
<keithint1234 gmail com> ha scritto:

Hi folks, it has been a very long while since I have posted to the 
Orca mailing list. In fact, more than a year. I was writing in to 
find out from people who know what they are talking about what the 
current state of Linux accessibility is with Orca, etc. I was 
wondering how the major Linux distributions like Fedora, Open Sues, 
etc are doing with Orca, Speech Dispatcher, and generally over all 
how is Linux these days? I have avoided Linux for a long while 
because I have a friend who believes actually, who is utterly 
convinced that linux accessibility is going backwards. But I don't 
honestly know for sure if that is so. So, I naturally question him 
and would like to know from those of you out their who are involved 
in Linux accessibility generally how do you think Linux is? WouldI 
be able to run something under Gnome these days like Virtual Box? 
How does Linux perform with the latest and greatest CPUs, multi core 
SMP  hardware and such from your experiences>? My friend says to me 
that most of you are using old clunky outdated hardware which is why 
you don't get Speech Dispatcher or Orca subsystem crashes, etc. But 
I haven't used Linux in so long that I figure the time is now to 
actually just come out and ask and see what responses I get. 
Obviously, I know that everybody will have their own distribution 
prefferences. But I'm not here to start a war on Ubuntu, vs Fadora, 
etc. I am trying aside from an OS specific fight to figure out what 
the current honest state of Linux accessibility is. Is it actually 
falling back and going backwards and thus dying out? I don't know. 
Is it worth grabbing something like the latest oh, I don't know, 
Open Suse, Fadora or similar and giving Orca a spin?

So I was hopeing some of you out their might have a better idea. 
Thanks!

All the best, Keith
_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing 
list orca-list gnome org 
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit 
http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual 
is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html

The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp

_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing 
list orca-list gnome org 
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list Visit 
http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The manual 
is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html


The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp


_______________________________________________ orca-list mailing list 
orca-list gnome org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list 
Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. The 
manual is at 
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html

The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org Find out 
how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp

Follow-Ups:
- Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
  - From: kendell clark
- Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
  - From: Willem van der Walt

References:
- [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
  - From: Keith Hinton
- Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
  - From: Vincenzo Rubano
- Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
  - From: kendell clark
- Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
  - From: Alex Midence
- Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility
  - From: kendell clark

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