Re: [gdm-list] GDM 2.28 a11y issues

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Willie:

> I've not had much of a chance to experiment with the new GDM 2.28 until 
> recently.  Here is a summary my experiments with GDM 2.28 from over the 
> weekend on my OpenSolaris b125 box.  It's a semi-exhaustive list, but I 
> don't guarantee I didn't miss anything.

Thanks for checking this.  Some comments below.

> - A metacity error dialog appears when I log in.  The dialog contains a 
> table.  The title of the table is 'These windows do no support "save 
> current setup" and will have to be restarted manually next time you log 
> in.'   The table consists of two columns. The first column is 'Class' 
> and the second column is 'Window'.  The sole entry in the table is 
> 'Login Window'/'Gdm-simple-greeter'.

This is related to bugzilla bugs #587732 and #598235.  On Solaris, I
backed out the fix for bug #587732 on Solaris since losing focus in
the login GUI is a serious problem.

If you rebuild SUNWgnome-wm.spec on Solaris, then the problem should go
away.  It has been modified to remove the dialog until a better fix for
the above problems is found.

> - The a11y icon should be in a corner of the screen to allow for more 
> easy mouse access.  Right now, it's tucked somewhere in the middle of 
> the panel.

This sounds like something that we should file a bug about.

> - The a11y icon should allow a 'hover' operation similar to the icon 
> used to enable MouseTweaks in the MouseTweaks applet.  When the icon is 
> activated via a hover operation, MouseTweaks should be enabled in 'hover 
> mode' and the a11y dialog should open.

We should have better hover support.  Is the right fix to make GDM just
work this way and respond to hover directly, or would it make more sense
to just integrate MouseTweaks so that it always runs with GDM?

> - There are no keyboard shortcuts or mouse gestures to launch the a11y 
> dialog.  Instead, need to Ctrl+Alt+Tab to panel and navigate to the icon 
> and activate it.

That does seem awkward.  There should be a nicer way to launch the
dialog via a keyboard shortcut, I think.  This sounds like something
that we should file a bug about.

> - There are no shortcuts to launch any assistive technology.  We 
> probably need a community discussion about these if the same gestures 
> are to be available at the login screen and the user session.

I think these issues would really best be fixed by addressing the
problems in gnome-control-center and gnome-settings-daemon so that
these sorts of features work in the user session as well as the GDM
login session.  See here:

  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=531595
  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=531596

> - The magnifier launches the 'magnifier' application instead of Orca 
> (Orca's magnification is preferred because it follows keyboard focus). 
> The magnifier also comes up in split screen mode instead of full screen 
> mode.

This should just involve modifying the file
/usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/gnome-mag.desktop to call the
appropriate program instead of calling "magnifier -v -m".  If you
want to propose a patch, I would think this would get accepted upstream
without much issue.

> - The gdm screen is launched without accessibility enabled.  As a 
> result, GTK+ does not appear to load the a11y modules and the 
> at-spi-registryd is not launched.  This yields the login screen 
> inaccessible.  a11y probably should be enabled by default for the gdm 
> screen, and this would hopefully fix the issues.

If you want to enable a11y in GDM by default, you just need to set the
GConf key to turn it on for the "gdm" user.  The same key that gets
set when you run Preferences->Assistive Technologies and click the
checkbox next to "Enable assistive technologies".

I am not sure if this sort of change makes sense to go upstream for all
distros, but it is the sort of change that would be easy to make on a
per-distro basis, I would think.

> - SlowKeys and BounceKeys features don't seem to work, but StickyKeys does.

Do they not work at all, or they just do not work via the a11y menu?
Don't these features support Xserver hotkeys to launch them?  Do the
hotkeys work?  Do they work once the user session starts?  In other
words, are they only broken at the GDM login screen?

Since GDM starts the normal user Xserver the same way that it starts the
Xserver used by GDM, it would be odd that it works in the user session,
but not in the GDM session.

> - When any of the AccessX keys are enabled, the "Keyboard Accessibility 
> Status" applet should appear in the panel (it currently does not).  This 
> applet provides the user with AccessX feedback, such as which modifiers 
> are latched/locked.

That seems a reasonable enhancement request, and something that would be
good to file a bug about.

> - Ctrl+Alt+Backspace doesn't seem to work any more (maybe an X Server 
> configuration issue?).

This is not really a GDM issue.  This is managed by the Xserver
configuration.

> - Entering Ctrl, Alt, Tab in sequence when StickyKeys is enabled doesn't 
> seem to permit the selection of the bottom panel.  It should.

Again, this sounds like an Xserver issue.

> - The GOK keyboard does not reflect the physical keyboard layout (it 
> probably should -- if not possible, it probably should reflect a 
> PC-101/PC-102/etc. layout).  Instead, it's a minimal A-Z keyboard.  This 
> simplified keyboard does not include an "Alt" key.

Is this an issue specific to launching GOK when GDM is running, or is
this a problem in the user session as well?

> - No audio cues seem to be given.  We should have a login screen sound 
> enabled by default.  This might be an audio permissions or configuration 
> problem on my machine.

I am not sure, but I do not think this feature was ever ported to the
new GDM.  If it has, you might be running into the audio permissions
issue I mention below.

> - Speech doesn't work.  It seems to launch, but no output is sent to the 
> speakers.  Running 'test-speech' as the gdm user from a shell logged in 
> via a different machine also seems to result in no speech.  Note that 
> the speech synthesis process runs, so this might be an audio permissions 
> or configuration issue.

If you are testing on Solaris, it might be a permissions issue.  The old
GDM used to call /usr/bin/setfacl to add the gdm user to the /dev/audio
and /dev/audioctl device permissions.  I wonder if that needs to be
ported to the new GDM also.

> - It would be nice if we could agree on a single a11y icon.  I prefer 
> some form of the vitruvian man - 
> http://live.gnome.org/Accessibility?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=logo.png 

That seems a reasonable request, so I think a bug should be filed.

Brian