Re: [orca-list] Improving Freedesktop Accessibility (was Re: Possibly Forking Gnome 2)

[Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com>]

Hi Jonie,

> Frederik Gladhorn and Jeremy Paul Whiting on the kde-accessibility list.
> They've done quite a bit already as part of 4.8 beta. List info is here:
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-accessibility


Thanks, Jonie. I'll certainly contact them and see where my help could
be used. I'm definitely interested in jump starting KDE access. I feel
this is where my interest are right now, and its something that is
necessary. While I have my complaints with Gnome 3 its the only viable
accessibility solution right now, and I think bringing KDE up to
Gnome's accessibility standards would give everyone concerned an
alternative desktop if Gnome isn't to their liking.

> Did you build it all from XFCE's git master? If not, then my guess is
> that there are some things that you do not have. In addition, there are
> a number of issues that I've listed on their 4.10 accessibility planning
> page which remain to be done. You can find more info here:
> http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.10/roadmap/accessibility

No, I'm afraid I was a bit of a lazy tester in that regard. I just
grabbed Xfce 4.8 out of Ubuntu 11's package repository and installed
and configured it. My intention was just to see where Xfce 4.8
accessibility is currently, and get a general overview of the desktop.
Its ok, but I think given what I know about KDE that's where my
interests lie in terms of an alternative to Gnome.

Plus KDE has always had a huge amount of popularity on the Linux
platform. Many distributions like Kubuntu, Mandriva, Slackware, you
name it use KDE by default, and for me it makes sense to put my
efforts towards getting the KDE desktop and apps as accessible as
Gnome. It has more work that needs to be done than Unity, LXDE, and
Xfce. I personally feel  it needs a lot of help if it is going to get
equal accessibility to what we've seen on Gnome 2 and Gnome 3. So for
the moment I'm going to contact the KDE accessibility team and see if
they can use me somewhere.

> As you observed elsewhere in this thread, Orca is a GNOME project. And
> while that doesn't dictate anything about what I cannot work on, it does
> require that I put some things on hold (like working with the XFCE guys)
> whilst I deal with GNOME-specific requirements (like the introspection
> work). Fortunately the development cycles are not the same from project
> to project, so while GNOME is ramping down and stabilizing, I can look
> towards other areas. But, again, all of these areas could certainly use
> your help -- and the help of others.

Right. I am not sure what the KDE guys have planned in terms of long
term accessibility, but its completely possible they might want a KDE
specific screen reader, say KReader, that will work hand in hand with
their own APIs and toolkits. It never hurts to have more than one
screen reader here, but I'm sure for now they'd like to make KDE
accessible to Orca so we have one screen reader that covers multiple
desktops and assistive technologies. I'll see what they want when I
talk to them.

Cheers!