Re: [orca-list] The State Of Linux Accessibility

[Vincenzo Rubano <vincenzo rubano studio unibo it>]

Hi Keith,

I know this message will make some people angry, but I want to share my point of view on linux accessibility. 
This came out rather long, so enjoy a cup of coffee while reading. ;)

First off, when talking about linux accessibility I like to clarify what I think is an important aspect: 
fragmentation is a problem for accessibility. Since every piece of software can be configured with different 
options/different library versions/different parameters and each distribution can make a lot of decisions on 
these aspects, it’s hard to say what’s accessible and what is not. As you can see, there are too many 
variables to consider. Too many for my tastes…

This being said, we have to distinguish between command line accessibility and GUI accessibility. If we talk 
about command line, we’re in a great situation. Just choose a kernel which is optimally configured for 
speakup (i.e. the debian kernel starting from version 3.2 or the Talking Arch one are two examples that I’ve 
used). If we talk about GUI, well, that’s another story…

The only “accessible” desktops out of the box are Gnome and Mate. Please note the quotes wrapping the 
“accessible” word, their meanings will be clearer after the lines below.
Gnome works, but there are some areas of the Gnome-Shell that are completely inaccessible for Orca. Gnome 
Control Center has unlabeled controls scattered here and there with some of them being not usable at all and 
Gnome Tweak Tool has the same issues plus a few focus-related ones. Evolution, the default mail client 
included in Gnome, is completely inaccessible (1). There are other Gnome pieces that are not accessible, but 
my memory does not recall their names. Tested with Gnome 3.14.3 and Orca 3.14.3.
Mate is a Gnome 2 fork. It is accessible, if you mind not having access to most of the applets (i.e. the 
applet to control wifi connections) and having unreliable multiple file selection due to Orca not announcing 
properly when an item is selected or not. Add a few other issues here and there and that’s the Mate 
situation. Tested with Mate 1.8.* and Orca 3.14.3.

Libreoffice/openoffice are the only complete office suites for linux. Saying that they’re accessible is 
really an abuse of the word, though. Libreoffice Writer can be used to some degree, but if you need to have 
complex formatting, multiple tables with many rows and columns and form controls embedded in your document, 
then be prepared to a lot of accessibility issues. And remember that you won’t be able to use structural 
navigation within LibreOffice documents due to a Libreoffice bug sitting in their queue for years. Impress, 
Calc, Base and Math have even more severe and critical accessibility issues that make them far from being 
usable if you’re blind. Tested with Libreoffice 4.3.* and 4.4.* with Orca 3.14.3. Notice that LibreOffice 
seems to run a little bit better under Debian than under Ubuntu, but don’t ask me the reason why.

The only decent way to browse the Web with orca is using Firefox. There’s not too much to complain about 
that, if you don’t mind having a lot of troubles with complex applications such as webmails and with websites 
that often refresh the page via ajax. Also, make sure to enable the Orca configuration option to show one 
control for each line in a web page, otherwise you’ll have a lot of latency whenever you get to a line with 
more than 10 controls (i.e. 10 radio buttons). (2)

Let’s spend some words on the Speech Dispatcher/Alsa/PulseAudio thing. Wow, too many parties involved, don’t 
you think so? Anyways, I’ve always had two issues:
1. From the SpeechDispatcher configuration, enable a module which is not present in SpeechDispatcher (i.e 
module for Pico under a Debian installation). Restart the SpeechDispatcher service and… Voilà, no speech at 
all! And no way to recover, unless you can remotely access your machine or you have a Braille display or 
sighted assistance to rely on. Tested with Debian Wheezy/Jessie.
2. While the computer is of, plug in your headsets. Turn on the computer. Unplug the headsets: you would 
expect audio to come from your laptop speakers, but you won’t get audio output at all. Plug in again your 
headsets and… Audio is there. Tested under Debian Wheezy/Jessie and Ubuntu-Mate 14.04.

Finally, let me spend some words on development. Accessibility bugs that can be fixed/worked around in Orca 
get fixed rather quickly, but the problem is that those fixes get to end users too slowly for my tastes. If a 
bug is in the accessibility infrastructure (i.e. pyatspi, atspi, atk and others), then they’ll be sitting 
there for years. Not to mention bugs within Gnome itself or third party apps/frameworks (LibreOffice and Qt 
just to mention two examples).

(1): Evolution accessibility is improving from what I can read, but currently it’s tricky to get to the 
message body after you open it. There is thunderbird as an alternative, but if you are like me and use more 
than 5 different mailboxes with 20+ different folders and thousands of messages, you won't find Thunderbird a 
great piece of software to work with in terms of accessibility.

(2) Recently, there has been some work to improve these aspects in Orca. We’ll see them in a 3.18 or 
something like that release, so be patient if you need some serious accessibility support within web content.

Vincenzo.

> Il giorno 05 ago 2015, alle ore 08:30, Keith Hinton <keithint1234 gmail com> ha scritto:
>
> Hi folks,
> it has been a very long while since I have posted to the Orca mailing list.
> In fact, more than a year.
> I was writing in to find out from people who know what they are
> talking about what the current state of Linux accessibility is with
> Orca, etc.
> I was wondering how the major Linux distributions like Fedora, Open
> Sues, etc are doing with Orca, Speech Dispatcher, and generally over
> all how is Linux these days?
> I have avoided Linux for a long while because I have a friend who
> believes  actually, who is utterly convinced that linux accessibility
> is going backwards.
> But I don't honestly know for sure if that is so.
> So, I naturally question him and would like to know from those of you
> out their who are involved in Linux accessibility generally how do you
> think Linux is?
> WouldI be able to run something under Gnome these days like Virtual Box?
> How does Linux perform with the latest and greatest CPUs, multi core
> SMP hardware and such from your experiences>?
> My friend says to me that most of you are using old clunky outdated
> hardware which is why you don't get Speech Dispatcher or Orca
> subsystem crashes, etc.
> But I haven't used Linux in so long that I figure the time is now to
> actually just come out and ask and see what responses I get.
> Obviously, I know that everybody will have their own distribution prefferences.
> But I'm not here to start a war on Ubuntu, vs Fadora, etc.
> I am trying aside from an OS specific fight to figure out what the
> current honest state of Linux accessibility is.
> Is it actually falling back and going backwards and thus dying out?
> I don't know.
> Is it worth grabbing something like the latest oh, I don't know, Open
> Suse, Fadora or similar and giving Orca a spin?
>
> So I was hopeing some of you out their might have a better idea.
> Thanks!
>
> All the best,
> Keith
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