Re: [g-a-devel] startup of a11y tools

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Now that this bug has been fixed for 2.24, we may have gotten rid of one 
of the last remaining barriers to enabling a11y by default:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=524263

Will

Peter Korn wrote:
> Hey Willie,
>
> Regarding #5 below - enabling accessibility on the desktop: I think it 
> is worth asking the question whether we are ready to have desktop 
> accessibility support on by default.  It takes more memory, so we 
> certainly want to allow folks to turn it off if they don't need it.  And 
> in the past it was more unstable than any of us liked (and so folks who 
> didn't need it wanted it off by default).  But... it is being used more 
> and more by folks doing testing of GUIs in general (thanks to dogtail, 
> et. al.) and it has been getting a lot more testing in general.
>
> So, maybe for GNOME 2.24 this would be a possibility?
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Peter Korn
> Accessibility Architect,
> Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>
> > I agree that things are a little confusing right now. I'm not sure I've 
> > fully understood/appreciated the motivation for why things are the way 
> > they currently are.  This might be a good opportunity to clarify, 
> > improve, or both. :-)
> >
> > I think there are a bunch of different problems to think about:
> >
> > 0) How do I know what accessibility solutions GNOME offers?  These 
> > include global system preferences (e.g., AccessX and theming) as well as 
> > assistive technologies (e.g., Orca, GOK, Dasher, MouseTweaks).  One 
> > solution is word-of-mouth, which should not be discounted as a 
> > reasonable solution.  Another solution is to read the documentation, 
> > which we are improving as part of GOPA.  Another is to scour the 
> > "Applications" menu to see what's there (i.e., the same way I'd stumble 
> > across an e-mail client or web browser).  Another is to scour the 
> > "Preferences" menu for assistive technology preferences.  This all seems 
> > like it could be cleaner.
> >
> > 1) How do I enable theming and/or AccessX features on the login screen? 
> >     For theming, I believe the current solution is to offer an optional 
> > menu on the username/password dialog, which is OK.  For AccessX, the 
> > current solution is to make sure AccessX is enabled in the X server and 
> > to rely upon the de facto settings and keyboard gestures built in the 
> > XKB server extension.  This is marginally OK, and tends to be the 
> > solution we see on public information kiosks (i.e., you don't get your 
> > exact personal preferences, but you should get enough to allow you to 
> > log in).
> >
> > 2) How do I launch an assistive technology from the login screen?  While 
> > it requires a one-time sysadmin operation to enable accessible login, 
> > the current solution of keyboard and/or mouse gestures for gdm seems to 
> > be reasonable for many users.  Doing so requires a priori knowledge of 
> > the keyboard/mouse gestures, but perhaps some automatic 'help' content 
> > generation might be possible?  In addition, a dialog as suggested in the 
> > kick off for this thread might help some users as long as they do not 
> > need an assistive technology to access the dialog.
> >
> > 3) How do I 'carry over' accessibility from the login screen to the 
> > desktop session?  The current solution is to treat the gdm session and 
> > the desktop session as separate.  This presents an issue for users until 
> > they've customized their desktop session for accessibility.  That is, 
> > the solution is that there is no carry over and that the user needs to 
> > customize their desktop session for accessibility.
> >
> > 4) Related to #3, there are at least two solutions for autostarting 
> > assistive technologies: general autostart for GNOME and a special 
> > "Accessibility" tab on the preferred applications dialog 
> > (gnome-default-applications-properties).  The overlap of these has been 
> > a source of confusion to me.  For simplicity, it has seemed to me that 
> > the assistive technology itself should be the one to offer the "start me 
> > on log in" option, and it should do so by just adding itself to the 
> > general autostart list for GNOME.
> >
> > 5) Related to #3, how do I enable a11y for the desktop?  The current 
> > solution is to provide the a11y preferences dialog for this.  IMO, this 
> > is kind of counterintuitive and is probably something that should 
> > instead be provided by the tool that requires the a11y infrastructure to 
> > be enabled (e.g., Orca, GOK, DogTail, etc.).
> >
> > 6) Related to #2, can I create a customized a11y environment for gdm? 
> > That is, always set the theme by default, always enable SlowKeys with a 
> > timeout of 0.75 seconds, etc.  I have no great answer for this since 
> > I've always been accustomed to the login screen being a shared system 
> > resource on a multiuser system.  :-(
> >
> > In any case, I think this is a good discussion.  We definitely have room 
> > for improvement/clarity.
> >
> > Will
> >
> > Brian Cameron wrote:
> >   
> > > Matthias:
> > >
> > >     
> > > > Imo an approach like the one taken by Jon McCann in the new gdm a11y
> > > > dialog (see  http://live.gnome.org/GDM/Screenshots ) is much more
> > > > straightforward and we should look at doing something similar inside
> > > > the session.
> > > >       
> > > I agree that the new dialog is a big step forward.  It is a good idea
> > > to provide a user-visible dialog where users can select the a11y
> > > programs they wish to run.
> > >
> > > However, this interface is lacking because many users with disabilities
> > > simply cannot navigate the GUI to begin with unless the a11y programs
> > > they need are already running.  A chicken-and-egg problem.
> > >
> > > I know the new GDM does support the ability to always launch (autostart)
> > > additional programs, which can be used to start a11y programs along with
> > > GDM.  This perhaps meets the needs of a single-user desktop.  However,
> > > this doesn't work well on multi-user desktops or terminal server
> > > settings where some users may need text-to-speech, others may need
> > > magnification, and others might not need any additional a11y programs to
> > > be running.
> > >
> > > I think this "support a11y on multi-user servers for users who may have
> > > different a11y needs" is an important use case that should be addressed
> > > before a general solution be implemented into the GNOME desktop.
> > >
> > > Brian
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list
> > > Gnome-accessibility-devel gnome org
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
> > >     
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> >