Re: [orca-list] State of accessibility in GNOME/Others, from an absentee

[Peter Vágner <pvdeejay gmail com>]

Hello,
Desktop and activies don't appear to be accessible in gnome.
However top pannel menus are all verry accessible, dock is accessible, 
list of apps is accessible, notification area is accessible and also 
search is accessible.
You can navigate with arrow keys in most of the cases, and you can cycle 
with these using alt+ctrl+tab or alt+ctrl+shift+tab.
Frankly the search is now most frequently used feature by me and also by 
many blind people using gnome 3.x as its is always ready and working 
verry well.
Second most frequently used feature of gnome is the top pannel with its 
menus.

Greetings

Peter


On 21.06.2013 14:05, Jacob Schmude wrote:
> Hi all,
> Well, it's been a few years since I used Orca and GNOME. I've been happily using Mac OS X for several years, 
> but am looking into possible alternatives as Apple (both in hardware and in OS X) is slowly drifting in a 
> restrictive direction I don't much care for. I've had all the Windows I can stomach at home (especially that 
> usability nightmare called Windows 8) and so I'm testing various Linux/GNOME combinations in virtual machine 
> environments. I've got a few observations, then a few quick questions.
>
> ** GNOME 3
> I've got GNOME 3 (both 3.6 and 3.8) running in a few virtual environments. I have two Ubuntu environments, 
> one running 3.6 and one running 3.8 on Ubuntu 13.04. I also have Arch running 3.8. I've got them all working, 
> but Orca doesn't read much of anything in any of them. The accessibility switcher (ctrl-alt-tab) reads, as do 
> the run dialog and most applications I launch. I've even got the QT bridge running in all these environments. 
> However, GNOME itself barely reads at all. The activities overview doesn't say anything when focus changes, 
> and with Orca's flat review I just get images and panels, no labels. This really isn't of much use. The 
> desktop, if indeed there is one, exhibits the same behavior and the alt-tab list is erratic at best.
>
> ** Unity
> In contrast, I find Ubuntu's Unity environment to be a bit quirky in the accessibility department, but fairly 
> workable. Most things do read at least to some extent and, since I'm no novice to either Orca or GNOME, I can 
> get around it quite easily, so that's what I'm testing with for now. To be perfectly honest, I'm surprised at 
> just how well Ubuntu works these days.
>
> Questions
> 1. Are my results typical of the current state of affairs? In other words, is GNOME behaving as it should or 
> is there something I've missed (perhaps a setting I need to enable)?
> 2. Are there any other desktop environments that I can test, i.e. Cinnamon on LinuxMINT, or Mate? Anyone know 
> if these work before I go to the trouble of installing them? I've done some playing with XFCE and LXDE and, 
> while they sort of work, they're a bit too minimalist for my taste coming from a Windows and Mac background. 
> I've got the command-line for minimalism when I need that as I often do (having a full UNIX command-line in 
> addition to a nice GUI is one of the things I do love about OS X to begin with).
> 3. What options are there for decent text to speech? I'd like US English, German, and Swedish (US English 
> being primary). Espeak does have them all, but listening to Espeak for any period of time gives me a raging 
> headache and its German is sub-par. Looking around I do see Cepstral still offers their Linux voices. 
> Apparently Ivona does too, but for some reason they're not willing to sell me a personal license for their 
> Linux voices, only for Windows. Not sure what's up with that, or why they'd turn down my money :). I know a 
> version of Neospeech for Linux exists, but I can't seem to find any concrete information about that one. 
> ViaVoice is out, as it's far too unstable. Are there other tts engines I could look into? Speech is my only 
> option, so decent tts is a must.
>
> Thanks for any help :)
>
> Jake
>
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