screensaver accessibility [was Re: Problems with xscreensaver && i18n]

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:
> 
[distro trimmed to remove some individuals who are probably already on 
gnome-hackers, and remove desktop-devel-list]

Hi:

One remaining issue which will need fixing sooner or later
(I am hesitant to mention 2.0.0 in this context ;-) is
that the screensaver needs to have some accessibility hooks so that
disabled people can log back in once xscreensaver starts.

The existing password dialog box is not accessible of course
because it's just X I believe.

I understand that there are some setuid issues with the use of GTK+
here; perhaps there's a solution that would allow us to use a Gtk+
dialog, in which case we'd be fine (possibly some tweaking required 
to get the setuid app talking to the user-owned accessibility registry 
service).

>From the user's perspective the following behaviors would be needed from
the screensaver:

* low-vision user: magnifier receives focus event from dialog when it
pops up.
   (text caret tracking not necessary 'cause, hey, it doesn't echo ;-)

* blind user: verbal prompt occurs when dialog pops up (this would
normally
   happen if the focus event were fired as above, and a screenreader
were in use)

* user of virtual/onscreen keyboard: virtual keyboard pops to front when
   dialog pops up (but preferably so as not to obscure the dialog).

It seems that these could possibly be accomplished without using GTK+
widgets, only a very small subset of the ATK interfaces/behaviors are
required.

For normal login we have some initial coverage: for instance with one of
the
talking/brailling kernels installed a blind user can login from the
shell.  There
are still some bootstrapping issues regarding things like the virtual
keyboard,
etc. which are "user" settings and only installed on login, but that's a
different discussion I think.

Regards,

-Bill

> hi people.
> 
> I didn't know this old debate had returned, but from the last time i saw
> this debate on the gnomecc list I specifically saw Jamie offer to change
> the capplet in xscreensaver to conform to the demands that the GNOME
> community had if that meant that GNOME would ditch our own capplet.
> 
> Judging by these mails that isn't the case, so my suggestion is that the
> current capplet is kept and the maintainers of the current capplet put
> Jamie on their /ignore list.
> 
> Christian