Re: [orca-list] accessible login

[Janina Sajka <janina rednote net>]

I need to report recent breakage in gdm--not sure exactly when, but
recent, within a month or so.

I have been a great fan of editing my (Fedora) /etc/gdm/custom.conf a
la:

# If SoundOnLogin is true, then the greeter will beep when login is ready
# for user input.  If SoundOnLogin is a file and the greeter finds the
# 'play' executable (see daemon/SoundProgram) it will play that file
# instead of just beeping
#SoundOnLogin=true
SoundOnLogin=/boot/gdm.wav

This is with gdm-2.20.1-4.fc8 on a fully updated Fedora 7.93 (beta).

I've cc'd David and Jonathan from Fedora, because I'm concerned the new
pulseaudio may also be part of the problem. Not only can I not play my
gdm.wav from gdm, I can't get a simple beep either. Alas, after loggin
an ordinary user, I get audio--though root still can't play audio. This
is clearly an a11y bug somewhere--not sure if it's gdm, or just Fedora
implementation.

Janina

Brian Cameron writes:
> 
> Janina:
> 
> It sounds like your testing shows that in many situations, things are
> working properly, which is nice.
> 
> > GLITCHES:
> > 
> > 1.)	Always on boot--the first GDM accessible login
> > attempt--would fail. While Orca would start, I heard "Welcome to Orca,"
> > I did not hear Orca say, "Panel." And, indeed, I could not get any more
> > speech until I restarted X (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace).
> 
> Why would Orca say "Panel" at login time.  I don't think GDM has
> any panel?
> 
> One thing you can try is to create a gesture listener that will
> launch an xterm by adding a gesture to
> /etc/X11/gdm/modules/AccessKeyMouseEvents to start xterm.  Then
> start the xterm and try running the same orca command that you
> find associated with the gesture in AccessKeyMouseEvents file.
> 
> Sometimes you can see errors echoed back to the terminal that might
> highlight what is wrong when you do this.
> 
> > 2.)	In all cases Orca would not launch upon login. I had always to
> > start Orca by hand (Alt-F2). This is consistently the case on F-7 and
> > F-7.92, except that Orca does start automatically for me on a fresh
> > boot, if I do NOT try an accessible login with GDM. I do have the
> > appropriate checkboxes checked in Assistive Technology Preferences.
> > 
> > 	David, should I file a bug? Against which app?
> 
> Some of the issues you describe might be caused by mismanagement
> of the audio device.  Perhaps the audio device doesn't have the
> right permissions in some cases?  In cases when it fails, what
> happens if you try to access /dev/audio?  Perhaps some program is
> openeing /dev/audio in BLOCKING mode and not closing the device?
> 
> > 3.)	If a speech engine that uses OSS is involved, I am able to get
> > either accessible GDM, or Orca at the desktop, but not both. If I
> > succeed with accessible GDM, I will be unable to launch Orca for the
> > desktop. It simply doesn't happen. However, if I login without speech,
> > Orca starts (via Alt-F2) without problem.
> > 
> > 	David, Jonathan, here's the #1 reason to default to espeak and
> > leave festival as an available, add-on install.
> 
> Do you mean to say this problem only happens with festival and not
> espeak?  If so, then this is probably a bug in festival.
> 
> > 4.)	The strangest circumstance I found myself in gave me espeak at
> > GDM, but TTSynth (ibmtts) at the desktop (F-7.92). Opening Orca
> > Preferences showed only the Viavoice driver until I reran 'orca -t' over
> > ssh. Interestingly, I was able to login and out several times with this
> > strange espeak plus TTSynth combination--until I reran setup.
> > 
> > 	I do not understand this one.
> 
> Me either.
> 
> > 5.)	Not specific to Orca and GDM, but a problem for accessibility on
> > Fedora nevertheless -- If I log in and out as several users in some kind
> > of random rotation, I will eventually lose audio rights if root is also
> > logged in somewhere.aI can also achieve this with one ordinary user plus
> > root. I have tried this from several directions, being
> > careful to login first as an ordinary user, and to insure that an
> > ordinary user is always logged in.
> > 
> > 	I  have not tried gui only logins to see whether I can break
> > audio that way. However, I believe many users, especially early on, will
> > be both console and gui logins--so this will be a problem.
> > 
> > 	Something in PAM? Would we had an audio group for audio device
> > access!
> 
> I am not sure how audio device permission management is handled on
> your system.  But it sounds like you are having problems with how
> /dev/audio permissions are managed on your OS.
> 
> It might require some configuration to support what you want to do.
> Perhaps you need to fix /dev/audio so that it always has read/write
> permissions for all users.  Some systems use an "audio" group to
> manage this.
> 
> It doesn't make sense for all systems to allow all users read/write
> access to the audio device.  In a multi-user environment, you don't
> really want people competing for the audio device.  But, in an
> environment where there is only one user, but the user switches
> accounts between root and their user, it might make sense to just
> allow all users to always have read/write permissions to the audio
> device.
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
> > Brian Cameron writes:
> >> Willie:
> >>
> >> This change was made to allow distros to configure where
> >> at-spi-registryd is located, if it is not in the default "libexecdir"
> >> location.  So, distros that install at-spi-registryd to a different
> >> location need to specify --with-atspi-dir=/path when configuring GDM.
> >>
> >> If this is their problem, then this should fix it.  This configure
> >> option is new in GDM 2.20.  If using older GDM, then you'ld probably
> >> just need to hack gui/gdmcommon.c to look in the right directory or
> >> backport the new configure option to the older GDM.
> >>
> >> Brian
> >>
> >>
> >>> Thanks!  I think the OpenSUSE folks also ran into the same problem.  JP 
> >>> seemed to think this change might have been the source of confusion:
> >>> http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gdm2/trunk/gui/gdmcommon.c?r1=5263&r2=5262&pathrev=5263.  
> >>> This change seemed to go in with 
> >>> http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gdm2?view=revision&revision=5263.
> >>> I'm not an expert in how various distributions build things, though, so 
> >>> I'm just passing on what I understood.
> >>>
> >>> Will
> >>>
> >>> Brian Cameron wrote:
> >>>> Janina:
> >>>>
> >>>> Some thoughts from the GDM maintainer...
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Accessible login appears to be broken on every Linux distribution. As
> >>>>> Will points out, this is an issue with distributions. Nevertheless, it's
> >>>>> a serious issue for accessibility.
> >>>>>    
> >>>> I recently worked with Ubuntu to fix their problems with accessibility
> >>>> so I think their recent releases should be working.  Their problem was
> >>>> that they install the at-spi-registryd to a non-default location and
> >>>> they needed to fix the way they call configure to specify the location
> >>>> of the registry daemon.  This might be a problem for other distros?
> >>>>
> >>>> There also have been some useful a11y related bug fixes in GDM 2.20,
> >>>> so I would recommend using the latest & greatest.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> The email below discusses Ubuntu. At the Gnome A11y Summit this weekend
> >>>>> we verified that Suse is broken. My own experience indicates that Fedora
> >>>>> 7 and Fedora 7.91 are broken.
> >>>>>    
> >>>> It would be helpful if people were to file bugs or explain on the
> >>>> gdm-list gnome org mail list what the problems are.  I'd be happy to
> >>>> help.  The GDM documentation at the following link has some help
> >>>> in the "Accessibility" section to explain how to debug some common
> >>>> accessibility issues with GDM:
> >>>>
> >>>>   http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/docs.html
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Now that our assistive technologies have passed from mostly
> >>>>> developmental software into the realm of usable tools for real people
> >>>>> with disabilities, this situation is no longer tolerable. We must call
> >>>>> on all distributions to institute procedures to insure that accessible
> >>>>> login gets fixed and stays fixed. This will require regular testing, as
> >>>>> there are many ways to break accessible login.
> >>>>>    
> >>>> There are some well known bugs/issues with accessibility.  For example,
> >>>> it doesn't work so well with gdmgreeter and some AT programs.  You
> >>>> probably need to switch to using gdmlogin if you really need to use an
> >>>> AT that can interact with the widgets.  gdmgreeter would require some
> >>>> work to really support accessibility properly.  It's main problem is
> >>>> the way it uses GnomeCanvas for building the theme, and the fact that
> >>>> it doesn't support keyboard navigation.
> >>>>
> >>>> Also, failsafe xterm isn't accessible.  Perhaps GDM should be
> >>>> configurable so you could use it with gnome-terminal, which does support
> >>>> accessibility?
> >>>>
> >>>> gdmsetup is also not accessible, and probably can't be as long as it
> >>>> requires that you run it as root.
> >>>>
> >>>> Brian
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Willie Walker writes:
> >>>>>   
> >>>>>> Hi Guy:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> The last time I looked, accessible login was broken on Gutsy.  I 
> >>>>>> sent information off to the Ubuntu folks for tracking the problem 
> >>>>>> down, but I'm not sure where they stand with it right now.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> There's some information on Accessible Login here:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>  http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/docs/2.18/accessibility.html
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Hope this helps,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Will
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> PS - Accessible login does indeed work - I've tested it on OpenSolaris.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Guy Schlosser wrote:
> >>>>>>     
> >>>>>>> Hey all, how do you enable accessible login in Gutsy?  After I 
> >>>>>>> updated last night, I now have the login sound, but orca does not 
> >>>>>>> start automaticly.  Any suggestions?  Also, is there something that 
> >>>>>>> needs to be done in order to have Orca read items where you have to 
> >>>>>>> be root to administer?  Finally, one last question.  I noticed that 
> >>>>>>> firefox 3 was in the Gutsy universe repos.  Why isn't that updated 
> >>>>>>> after alpha7.  Alpha 8 has been released and a9pre is current.  
> >>>>>>> Thanks much in advance for any help.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Thanks,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Guy
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>> Orca-list mailing list
> >>>>>>> Orca-list gnome org
> >>>>>>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> >>>>>>> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca
> >>>>>>>          
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Orca-list mailing list
> >>>>>> Orca-list gnome org
> >>>>>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> >>>>>> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca
> >>>>>>      
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> >>>> gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> >>>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
> >>>>  
> > 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca

-- 

Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.202.595.7777;	sip:janina a11y org
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