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

[Chuck Anderson <cra WPI EDU>]

I've done some testing of accessibility support on GDM, specifically 
the screen reader and audio output, on Fedora 9.

On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 10:13:06AM -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
> What is the plan for SoundOnLogin=true ? Is it coming back? Should I
> just be patient?

I don't know about that option, however I do have sound working on my 
GDM login screen.  Orca starts up automatically.

> And, what's the thought on providing audio device support at this stage?
> Under the default pulseaudio, configuration the audio device isn't
> available until after the login succeeds.

I didn't do anything special to enable audio device support or 
pulseaudio on GDM.  It just worked for me by default after installing.  
All I had to do was click on the accessibility icon in the lower left 
corner of the login screen to turn on "Hear text aloud".  If there was 
a shortcut-key for this option would that be adequate?

> Lastly, let me note that there's a security dimension here that can only
> be solved by clearing up a11y login. Without appropriate At support,
> it's not all that hard to get out of sync with the GDM dialog and put
> one's password where the login ID belongs.

The new GDM greeter by default lists all the local users on the 
system, and you select the user's name from the list to log in as that 
user.  Then you type the password.  So there won't usually be a need 
to type your login ID, unless this is the first time you are logging 
into a system with remote users (NIS, LDAP, etc.) in which case your 
user name might not be in the list yet.  In that case, you have to 
click "Other..." and then type the login ID.

I did notice that the text that Orca is reading is less than helpful.  
First of all, it says nothing at all when the login window is ready to 
be used.  It doesn't start reading until I click something on the 
login widget.  Second, after clicking my user's full name in the list, 
it says "Password:" and sometimes it reads each key of my password as 
I type it instead of saying "star".  I can't reproduce this problem 
all the time, however.  I think there are some race conditions between 
when GDM starts up pulseaudio and Orca, because I have heard the 
"Welcome to Orca" occasionally when the login window is ready.

Finally, I noticed that after logging in, Orca says "Welcome to Orca" 
but then the process is killed or dies for some reason, and the rest 
of my session no longer has the screen reader enabled, even though I 
have it enabled in my session preferences.  Logging out doesn't fix it 
either, and either Orca or pulseaudio (not sure which) no longer runs 
on the GDM screen.  Rebooting seems to fix things.

So it seems that the support for accessibility, including audio and 
the screen reader on the login screen exists, it is just that there 
are many bugs that need to be ironed out.