Re: [orca-list] Accessibility Testing in Ubuntu 12.04

[Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com>]

Alan wrote:

"gnome has not been dumped, neither has gnome3. Gnome *Shell* is not
the default shell in Ubuntu, it is the gnome 3 desktop with the Unity
shell. (roughly speaking)"

Right. I get that. I realize the majority of apps that ship with a
stock Ubuntu desktop install such as gedit, rythmbox, Totem, etc are
all stock Gnome 3 apps. By Gnome I meant that gnome-shell was dropped
in favor of Unity as the default shell. Obviously, I can switch shells
by grabbing gnome-shell from software-center, but was interested in
the reasoning with using Unity instead.

"nope, not going to happen, for me I think it is best to concentrate
on influencing the outcome of things that are possible. Unity is part
of the overall strategy targetting phones, TVs, tablets and other
stuff and it is going to remain the primary shell that gets marketed.
This doesn't mean it is the only shell that works, but it will be the
one that gets the attention, and the investment in developer time."

Well, thanks for answering my question. I was interested to know why
Unity was being marketed over gnome-shell and what the long term
strategy was for Ubuntu. Now, that you have explained it I think I
understand where Ubuntu is heading.

As far as my personal feelings go its more an access issue than
anything else. If Unity was fully accessible I probably wouldn't have
any complaints as long as I have the same degree of access as I had
under Gnome 2.32. I'm pretty flexable and can adapt to Unity in time,
but the screen reader access has to be there to make it a viable
choice.

"you can install gnome shell on Ubuntu or use the new gnome3 classic
desktop which is apparently about as good as it used to be on gnome2
now."

Yeah, that's exactly what I've been doing. I've got a stable box
running 11.10 with gnome-classic and I've done the same thing to my
test box running Precise beta 1. So its not like I'm totally without
an accessible GUI, but it just takes more effort from the outset to
grab packages from apt-get, install them, and then configure
everything to my personal specifications. However, access using the
gnome-classic desktop isn't too bad. I can live with it until Unity
gets fixed.

Cheers!