[orca-list] Evolution e-mail reader bugs affecting accessibility

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi All:

Similar to the OpenOffice bugs that Rich sent out yesterday, there are
still a few Evolution e-mail reader bugs that we need fixing by the
Evolution team in order to provide a compelling user experience.

The bugs are listed below.

What we've found in the past is that if our users add comments to the
bugs, this has helped spur on the developers to get these problems
fixed.

So, if you feel so inclined, and these bugs are affecting what you do,
could you please comment on the various Evolution issues listed below.

Thanks!

Will

All the bugs related to Evolution are listed in one Orca Evolution
meta-bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423346

The following individual bugs are listed in rough priority order:

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* Evolution Bug 347347 â [a11y] Moving the caret around in the message
arrow doesn't generate "object:text-caret-moved" events.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347347

This is the bug which prevents us from knowing what text we're selecting
as we're selecting it. There is a work around in Orca of entering flat
review with KP_Enter which will tell you what is selected, but that's
quite a bit of effort when you're selecting large blocks of text.

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* Evolution Bug 423395 â When first opening or tabbing to message
content, place the caret at the beginning of the message
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423395

This drives all of our user's crazy, and the Orca workaround (see
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422487) doesn't work properly
with HTML formatted emails.

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* Evolution Bug #347964 â [a11y] When deleting messages in Evolution,
Orca initially speaks the wrong tree item.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347964

Orca speech users have to wait too long to find out what the (new)
current message before proceeding. And if they don't know that, they
might accidentally delete the wrong message (e.g. while quickly trying
to go through the list deleting unread spam).

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* Evolution Bug #331447 â The accessible name for Mail message header
list "checkbox" table cells is not useful.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=331447

If you're quickly arrowing Up/Down with in Orca speak cell mode, looking
for a message with an attachment or that's been flagged, you have to
listen to the name before the state. Again, another unnecessary delay
for Orca speech users.

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* Atk Bug 348466 â [a11y] When in the 'subject' and 'to' lines of
evolution, backspaced characters are not announced
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=348466

This one is bigger than Evolution. It's the case of text entries in all
dialogs. In which case it's pretty significant, in terms of access to
Evolution.

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* Evolution Bug 351516 â [a11y] Evolution does not issue "focus:" events
when the last message in the message header summary list is deleted.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=351516

This is annoying because you don't know where you have landed. There is
a work around in Orca when confronted with silence. if you do
Orca_Modifier+KP_Enter to read the title bar, you find out where you
are.

Less effort than identifying selected text when composing a message.
Plus it only seems to be an issue when you're on the last message rather
than all messages.

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* Evolution Bug #357923 â Welcome message will not be reported by orca.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357923

Orca did read the title of the window for the new message, though.

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* Evolution Bug #424147 â Mail message window inconsistent with item
selected in mail header list.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424147

Orca does read the window title (Evolution Account Assistant) and the
Forward button which has focus. While you would like to know what you
are moving forward on, you can guess from context and the speech
provided that it's related to creating a new account. And you can flat
review to what's not being spoken.

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There is also another Evolution bug that if fixed, would improve the
usability of Evolution, both for sighted and blind users:

* Evolution Bug #352085 â must click to select folder by keyboard in
"Select Folder" dialog
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=352085

You used to be able to arrow in the tree just like you can in any tree.