Re: [g-a-devel] [gdm-list] What's the Status of Audio in GDM?

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Matthias:

I'm cc:ing the gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list since they
are probably the right people to include in this discussion .  I am
also cc:ing George Kraft since I have spoken with him in the past
about this issue.

> > As we've been testing GDM for accessibility support on Fedora 9, we
> > continue to note the lack of audio support. This means that a screen
> > reader user has no way to know when it's OK to login.
> >
> > There is no "beep" on backspace at the Login and Passwd entry. More
> > seriously still:
> >
> > SoundOnLogin=true
> > SoundOnLoginFile=[some].wav
> >
> > in /etc/gdm/custom.conf continues broken.

Right, the new GDM rewrite does not yet support any audio notifications.
Some audio notification is very important for letting users know when
the login screen is ready for input, when a failed login has occurred,
etc.

> > Of course we're needing the additional benefit of starting Orca for TTS
> > via Ctrl-s, Orca with braille via Ctrl-b, etc. I can't comment on
> > anything other than sound myself, but will be happy to investigate the
> > other gestures if that's desired. But, what should we expect for sound?
>
> What version are you trying out ?
> Ray has been fixing the speech support in gdm; and I have had orca read
> the user list to me, personally.

I have also tested text-to-speech in the new GDM rewrite and it works
well.  However, you have to first navigate the GUI to launch the
feature.  Text-to-speech is often used by blind users, who obviously
cannot navigate the GUI to first launch Orca.  So this is a real
problem.

Keybindings tend to be used by most blind users, while dwell gestures
are needed by users with mobility issues, or users who can not use the
keyboard for whatever reason.  For example, a blind user would likely
want to hit a keybinding to launch orca while a mobility impaired user
would likely want to use a dwell gesture to launch GOK.

> If you could compile a list of 'standard' keyboard shortcuts for a11y on
> the login screen, that would be very useful, and we'll make sure to have
> them implemented asap.

I do not believe there are standard gestures or keyboard shortcuts.  I
discussed this with George Kraft about this about a year ago, and it did
not seem that there was any clear cross-platform consensus on what
keybindings or mouse gestures  should be used to launch AT
functionalities.  Perhaps George can comment further.

A few months ago I had a discussion with Jon and Ray about this and
everyone agreed that it would be best to add general support so that
the ability to launch AT programs via keybindings and mouse gestures
is supported in both the login screen and in GDM.  Now that the new
GDM rewrite uses gnome-settings-daemon, metacity, and other common
session components, a common interface for launching AT functionality
should be feasible.

I filed the following two bugs about this:

Provide default keybindings for launching AT programs:

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

Add mouse gesture support for launching AT programs into g-s-d:

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

Brian