From lyz at ubuntu.com Sun May 1 20:16:35 2011 From: lyz at ubuntu.com (Elizabeth Krumbach) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 13:16:35 -0700 Subject: Wednesday May 11th: Invisible Exhibition in Budapest Message-ID: Hi everyone, For those of you attending the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest from May 9-13 I thought I'd pass along news that a bunch of us are getting together and visiting the Invisible Exhibition in Budapest on Wednesday evening right after sessions. We've worked with the Ubuntu Hungary team to make this happen (thanks again Hajni!), details about the exhibition, registering and attending are now up on the Ubuntu Accessibility blog: http://ubuntuaccessibility.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/the-invisible-exhibition-at-uds/ Please let me know if you have any questions or have trouble registering. -- Elizabeth Krumbach // Lyz // pleia2 http://www.princessleia.com From themuso at ubuntu.com Mon May 2 00:18:16 2011 From: themuso at ubuntu.com (Luke Yelavich) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 10:18:16 +1000 Subject: What happened with Ubiquity installer accessibility and localization? In-Reply-To: References: <4DBA5D8D.4070106@pickup.hu> <4DBAC50C.4070307@pickup.hu> Message-ID: <20110502001816.GA4719@strigy.yelavich.home> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 12:29:48AM EST, Mackenzie Morgan wrote: > On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:02 AM, Hammer Attila wrote: > > Hy, > > > > Mackenzie, happening following for example if I use hungarian language: > > Orca spokening proper hungarian translation the "Erase disk and install > > Ubuntu" radiobutton label (translation is Merevlemez törlése, és az Ubuntu > > telepítése), and spokening the accessible variable (use_device) text. > > So, in hungarian language, Orca spokening the actual selected radiobutton > > label: > > "merevlemez törlése, és az Ubuntu telepítése use_device". > > OK, I was afraid it was only reading the label if English! What it's > doing is what I'd expect it to do based on the current code. > > > So, future will be awailable an update this problem related in Natty? > > Probably not til Oneiric. New versions of Ubiquity can be downloaded > from the Internet if you're installing while connected, but I don't > really know if the Ubiquity developers will be packaging new versions > of it for Natty at this point (since Natty is released). I can't > upload new versions of Ubiquity to Ubuntu, just send patches to the > appropriate people to get it into Ubiquity's trunk which will then > make it into the next version of Ubuntu. Having said that, I hope to encorporate as many ubiquity fixes as possible into Vinux at some point, so Vinux users can still benefit from the improvements made there. There is also going to be a session at UDS to discuss Ubiquity's accessibility. Luke From macoafi at gmail.com Mon May 2 04:11:55 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 00:11:55 -0400 Subject: What happened with Ubiquity installer accessibility and localization? In-Reply-To: <20110502001816.GA4719@strigy.yelavich.home> References: <4DBA5D8D.4070106@pickup.hu> <4DBAC50C.4070307@pickup.hu> <20110502001816.GA4719@strigy.yelavich.home> Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Luke Yelavich wrote: > Having said that, I hope to encorporate as many ubiquity fixes as possible into Vinux  at some point, so Vinux users can still benefit from the improvements made there. > > There is also going to be a session at UDS to discuss Ubiquity's accessibility. I have already warned Ev that I intend to break his test script by putting in real accessible names. -- Mackenzie Morgan From milton at tomaatnet.nl Mon May 2 20:54:36 2011 From: milton at tomaatnet.nl (Milton) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 22:54:36 +0200 Subject: Natty live cd and orca References: <2C6A82C226704064956078C919D2C55C@milton> Message-ID: F2, nor alt+F2 works. I think the unity desktop appears. alt+F1 either works. My sighted assistance could not see where to shut down the computer. So at the end I went to a virtual console with ctrl+alt+F1 and shutdown the computer. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jude DaShiell" To: "Milton" Cc: Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2011 10:44 PM Subject: Re: Natty live cd and orca > Try this: > 1) hit f2, > 2) type orca --setup > > On Sat, 30 Apr 2011, Milton wrote: > >> Hi, >> How can I try the live cd with Orca? >> After I started up the pc with the live cd, I press the spacebar and >> select a language (with the help of a sighted person). >> Pressing F5, 3 and twice the enter key, after a while the desktop >> appears. >> How can I start Orca or is it not possible? >> Milton > > From alex.midence at gmail.com Wed May 4 02:47:41 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 21:47:41 -0500 Subject: Getting Natty to talk Message-ID: Hi, all, I'm interested in trying out Ubuntu 11.04 prior to its "vinuxification" ;). Here's waht I'd like to know: I want to download the .iso and then run the OS in VMware inside of Windows. How do I make the thing talk? Could someone describe what happens when you start up the iso file? Is there a menu? Does a gdm login dialog come up? If so, how do you get it to log in? I want to get to a point where I can type orca and press enter to have Orca launch as in alt f2 or something like that. If these thigns ahve been answered somewhere else, please point me to the url where I can find it. Thanks. Alex M From linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com Wed May 4 05:16:17 2011 From: linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com (Alex H.) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 01:16:17 -0400 Subject: Getting Natty to talk In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Alex, I installed 11.04 a few days ago in VBox and it went pretty well. I booted up the machine, then started tapping the spacebar for about twenty seconds to get the keyboard language screen up, from there I hit F5, followed by the number 3 on the number row, then enter. That enables accessibility and Orca. Within about a minute or so, the desktop loaded automatically and Orca came up talking. It was in GNOME2 since I disabled 3D in my VM so I could use GNOME; I've not tried Unity yet. The first time I booted the CD I don't think I was quick enough to get accessibility support enabled as it just loaded the desktop and Orca did not speak. Installation was not too painful, just hit enter on the Install icon on the desktop. Orca didn't tell me when it was finished but I just hit the enter key and it restarted into the new system. HTH, Alex On 5/3/11, Alex Midence wrote: > Hi, all, > > I'm interested in trying out Ubuntu 11.04 prior to its > "vinuxification" ;). Here's waht I'd like to know: > > I want to download the .iso and then run the OS in VMware inside of > Windows. How do I make the thing talk? Could someone describe what > happens when you start up the iso file? > > Is there a menu? Does a gdm login dialog come up? If so, how do you > get it to log in? I want to get to a point where I can type orca and > press enter to have Orca launch as in alt f2 or something like that. > If these thigns ahve been answered somewhere else, please point me to > the url where I can find it. > > Thanks. > Alex M > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > From everett at zufelt.ca Wed May 4 09:56:04 2011 From: everett at zufelt.ca (E.J. Zufelt) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 05:56:04 -0400 Subject: 11.04 accessible install Message-ID: <847CCAFB-A86A-44EE-BD2C-DC6E95E8B88C@zufelt.ca> Good morning, It's been a while since I tracked this list. Just curious if there is a page explaining accessibility of 11.04, including accessible install, for blind users requiring speech. Thanks, Everett Zufelt http://zufelt.ca Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/ezufelt View my LinkedIn Profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/ezufelt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macoafi at gmail.com Wed May 4 14:14:09 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 10:14:09 -0400 Subject: Getting Natty to talk In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 1:16 AM, Alex H. wrote: > It was in > GNOME2 since I disabled 3D in my VM so I could use GNOME; I've not > tried Unity yet. If you choose an accessibility profile, it'll automatically give you GNOME 2, even if you have 3D -- Mackenzie Morgan From alex.midence at gmail.com Fri May 6 13:21:20 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 08:21:20 -0500 Subject: [orca-list] system menu in default accessible desktop (ubuntu 11.04) In-Reply-To: References: <000001cc0b8e$af607ea0$0e217be0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi,everyone, My apologies for the cross-post however, I felt it a good idea to cc all interested parties on this, so to speak. I too had trouble with 11.04. I was trying to create a virtual machine with Vmware running on Windows XP Media Center. I do this with extremely little effort on Vinux versions all the time. I wanted to try out the mainstream, true blue Ubuntu to see what all cool new packages it offered and how Orca behaved in it with an unmodified Pulse Audio configuration. Wherever possible, I do like to use things as closely to the way in which my sighted friends do as I am able. The results were highly discouraging. I couldn't get it to talk at all. I tried all sorts of things and nothing worked. I couldn't get orca to turn on and I understand sound is muted by default? They ought to at least have something trigger the system bell to beep when you arrow over the blind user profile or something. I hit f5 and 3. I also arrowed down 3 times. Nothing, zilch, nada. I never found out what version of Orca comes installed on it, what kind of speech synth is on it or any of that. I gave up and went running back to Vinux which is not the least bit bashful and tells you just exactly what's on its mind. I figure I'll create a Maverick-based virtual machine and then upgrade it to Natty to see how that turns out since I'll have orca running when I do that. I wonder if it will upgrade at-spi up to at-spi2 for me and all that. It's another reason I'm keen to try it out since I have long been curious about taking the as yet unfinished qt-at-spi out for what I am sure wil be a bumpy spin. I think it's important that as many advanced Linux users of accessible technology try this thing out since it looks like things were getting pretty close there for a moment and it would be a shame to have this fizzle out resulting in another prolonged wait for something to be done about qt accessibility. anyway, that's my Natty experience for what it's worth. Thanks. Alex M On 5/6/11, Thomas Ward wrote: > Hi Andy, > > As for question one, Ubuntu 11 comes with Gnome 3. As you probably are > aware I think we are all in the same boat with Gnome 3. They've broken > some things, accessibility wise, that use to work in Gnome 2.32 and > earlier. > > As for question two, where is the system menu, I haven't figured that > one out yet myself. I have however come up with a quick and dirty work > around and if you know the name of the system application to simply > open run and enter the name into the run dialog. That's the only way I > know to change your screensaver, keyboard settings, gdm settings, etc > without getting to the system menu itself. Personally, I'm inclined to > go back to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS until all this stuff is resolved with > Gnome 3 as it seems less accessible than previous versions. > > HTH > On 5/5/11, Andy B. wrote: >> >> Hi. >> >> I finally got Ubuntu 11.04 installed as a wubi image. Got a chance to play >> around with it and it looks pretty cool. I can't quite tell what desktop >> I'm >> using, but it looks possibly like gnome to me. There is a launcher bar on >> the top of the screen with things like home, applications, ubuntu1, Ubuntu >> software center, firefox, the office apps, workspace switcher and trash. >> Below the launcher bar is a menu bar that has things like file, edit, >> view, >> messages, calendar/clock, network and quite a few more. Below this menu >> bar >> is an empty space (assuming it is the desktop icon area). My questions, >> what >> happened to places and system? And once I find them, how do you open the >> menu itself? Pressing enter on applications just brings up some places >> window where you can type/search for something. >> > _______________________________________________ > orca-list mailing list > orca-list at gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. > The manual is at > http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html > The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions > Netiquette Guidelines are at > http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines > Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org > Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp > From mj at mjw.se Fri May 6 19:48:06 2011 From: mj at mjw.se (mattias) Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 21:48:06 +0200 Subject: orca Message-ID: <1304711286.27482.1.camel@debian> only my computer or are orca verry unstable on natty? sometimes orca completely chrashes the only solution are loging out or restart the desktop itself work From alex.midence at gmail.com Sun May 8 19:27:52 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 14:27:52 -0500 Subject: Desktops other than gnome Message-ID: Hi, all, Based on all the trouble that has been going on with gnome and unity and so forth and accessibility, I think that it is a very very good idea for everyone to start exploring other desktops in case one ever goes completely to pot. In recent weeks, I have experimented with Ice WM, Sawfish and Fluxbox. Of them all, Ice WM worked sort of but only as a window manager in Gnome. I never did get Fluxbox to work with Orca and the same goes for Sawfish. Has anyone had any success using any other desktop other than Gnome successfully with Orca? I've heard very promising things about XFCE and LXDE but I'm not sure what I would need to do to try these out since I hear you have to set certain environment variables in some of the files that control them in order for Orca to work. Has anyone done this successfully? I guess, with Ubuntu, there is Xubuntu and Kubuntu. I may be in a position to find out for myself how KDE is coming along but the others are a mystery to me. Thanks. Alex M From macoafi at gmail.com Mon May 9 01:46:25 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 21:46:25 -0400 Subject: Desktops other than gnome In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 3:27 PM, Alex Midence wrote: >  I guess, with > Ubuntu, there is Xubuntu and Kubuntu.  I may be in a position to find > out for myself how KDE is coming along but the others are a mystery to > me. Kubuntu 11.04 does not include KAccessible (screenreader for Qt-based apps) but it is available in the archive. I intend to make it part of the default install for 11.10. The Qt AT-SPI2 bridge is incomplete at the moment, so for now it is necessary to use Orca for GTK apps and KAccessible for Qt ones. -- Mackenzie Morgan From alex.midence at gmail.com Mon May 9 12:07:07 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 07:07:07 -0500 Subject: Desktops other than gnome In-Reply-To: <4DC725A1.1040008@gmail.com> References: <4DC725A1.1040008@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi, Burt, I've never used Knopix. I've used Debian and Ubuntu but both through the Vinux mods. My last attempt to use an unmodified Ubuntu died a-borning. I hear Knopix uses an accessified version of LXDe whom noone seems to know how to duplicate. Now, I've not had the chance to use Unity but, I wonder since it's heading towards the tablet pc market according to what I've read, I wonder, I say, if some of the rather innovative ideas Android and I-Phone have put in place might not be implemented in it. For that matter, I might say the smae of Gnome shell since it, too, is heavily mouse dependent and making it accessible requires quite a bit of work to make keyboard access possible. I-Phone and, to a lesser extent Android, both use gestures to really give someone a feel for the layout of the screen. I don't know why this couldn't be done with a mouse. Configure the mouse so that it only activates if buttons are presed in conjunction with a keyboard press. Control mouse click activates something, regular mouse click reads something in more detail. Window boundaries could be indicated by special sounds like buzzes, tones or beeps. Mouse pointer could be made somewhat less responsive so that it moves 1/3 the amount of pixels it normally would giving you a chance to explore. Widgets and buttons and things could be indicated by special sounds too, tones for available ones and buzzes for grayed out ones. In the tablets or on laptops with gesture pads, Android's brilliant a"haptic" feedback feature could be duplicated to give tactile feedback as the user moves his finger around on it. To take a page from I-Phone, 1 finger lets you explore, 3 fingers lets you select. I have no idea how much coding this would take to implement but I don't understand why something like this hasn't been considered or brought up. It's as if thinking on how to make something accessible has stagnated to an extent in non-mobile software. Does anyone have any thoughts on this matter, Alex M On 5/8/11, Burt Henry wrote: > I finally got a CD and burned Knopix Adriane 6.44 to it, put that on a > usb-key, and did get the main menu to come up in the graphical session. > I need to try my old knopix 6.22 disk and see if maybe it will as well > since 6.44 had me scared/seems to have a delay built in, i.e. I had to > hold alt+f1 down for around a second , maybe more before the menu came up. > As Tony said system aps were not accessible, and I had libre office > crashes, but I am assuming that's because of "stable release Orca"..lol... > The menu was sparse and I still can't get on-line to install more to see > how they perform. > Anyone know if there is an accessible way to read sys-tray icons? Knopix > showed 2.6.37 for the kernel when I ran uname, nice in theory, but if > synaptic and gpartit are not accessible I wonder if there is not more > work to do with lode, (that is what Knopix Adrian runs isn't it?) than > with Gnome3 and unity. > I haven't read much good about the gnome shell though, (and that's not > even taking accessibility in to account). > I have read at least one blog suggesting that there's enough support to > keep some version of gnome 2.x alive for some time to come as Unity is > just too mackish, or newbish, or something for the average Linux user. > Unity is probably a good deal for first time Linux users, but I still > worry that much of its friendlyness will be lost on screen-reader useres. > All of this to say that it is not just us blind folk who are feeling a > bit like their Linux is up in the air these days. > > but > > El 05/08/2011 02:27 PM, Alex Midence escribió: >> Hi, all, >> >> Based on all the trouble that has been going on with gnome and unity >> and so forth and accessibility, I think that it is a very very good >> idea for everyone to start exploring other desktops in case one ever >> goes completely to pot. In recent weeks, I have experimented with Ice >> WM, Sawfish and Fluxbox. Of them all, Ice WM worked sort of but only >> as a window manager in Gnome. I never did get Fluxbox to work with >> Orca and the same goes for Sawfish. Has anyone had any success using >> any other desktop other than Gnome successfully with Orca? I've heard >> very promising things about XFCE and LXDE but I'm not sure what I >> would need to do to try these out since I hear you have to set certain >> environment variables in some of the files that control them in order >> for Orca to work. Has anyone done this successfully? I guess, with >> Ubuntu, there is Xubuntu and Kubuntu. I may be in a position to find >> out for myself how KDE is coming along but the others are a mystery to >> me. >> >> Thanks. >> >> Alex M >> > > -- > *the above was probably written by- > Burt Henry > (registered Linux-user 521,886) > Contact Info: *email, GTalk&AIM- > (burt1iband at gmail.com) > *Follow Me on Twitter- > @BurtHenry > *and I’m on Facebook* > > From alex.midence at gmail.com Mon May 9 13:31:31 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 08:31:31 -0500 Subject: Desktops other than gnome Message-ID: Hi, Mackenzie, If you plan to include KAccessible in the 11.10 release of Kubuntu, do you think there is a way to create a hotkey that would launch it? For instance, in Vinux, we have either alt-control o or shift control o which runs Orca no matter where you are in Gnome including the gdm login screen. This way, if something ever breaks speech or, hangs it up, you can always restart the screen reader without having to worry about being in the right place to type in its name. I was thinking that such an option would let somebody start hearing their system talk from the very outset. Also, I'm a bit startled by what appears to be a statement that KAccessibility is a screen reader. I thought it was an accessibility api. Does this mean that it is a full-fledged screen reading solution that lets you read the screen in a controled manner like speakup, orca and CO.? I was under the impression that this wasn't the case in KDE which is why no blind people that I know of use it right now. If it reads only a few things, I wonder what would need to be done to it to flesh it out. To have a proper screne reader, you need a few things: 1. Ways to read selective parts of the screen without moving the focus point. This lets you explore without activate anything or losing your place. This is done wither with modifiers that change behavior of movement keys, or in some cases by changing the mode in which the screen reader operates. If you are familiar with Vi, this concept is well known to you in the way Vi lets you have an input and a command mode. The closest and, I'd say most uncanny paralel is in the way windows screen readers treat the browsing of webpages. 2. Granularity of what you are reading and how you move focus around. Read or move forward and backward by window, paragraph, block of code, line, sentence, word, and character and, even use phonetic values for character. Like this: hotel echo lima lima oscar 3. Attribute indicators. Ways to set speech to change voice for things like bold, italic or underline characters or, failing that, words to indicate it. 4. A way to set it so it announces changes in important regions of the screen and ignores others. You may want to know when the webpage you are waiting for has loaded but you don't really care about each and every time the system's clock changes minutes or seconds. You may want a hotkey thaqt lets you access the time though. To make it easier on the poor overwhelmed sap who's got to code all this stuff, you want a nice, complete, configuration dialog so that people can set up their own preferences about this and not put al that burden on developers who may never use a screen reader and can't be expected to guess what you are going to want to know and when. 5. Application awareness. Some applications require different functionality than others and what works amazingly in one may cause inconvenient results in others so, you ned a way for application-specific customizations to be loaded whe that application starts. 6. Widget agnosticism. You need something that lets the user inform the screen reader that a what to do and how to react with a non-standard widget. This is something Orca has thusfar not been able to do but is something those of us with years of using Windows screen readers take for granted. If something isn't quite accessible yet, you at least get some numeric graphics number and some information instead of an "inaccessible" message and the thing flopping belly up and refusing to give you anything whatsoever. I do believe that if it had this feature, people would've been able to use qt widgets to some extent long ago. The way it is now, you are locked into at-spi and much too much burden is placed on the developers of other software to modify their code to fit the screen reader. In windows, people can and often do render applications which are not released with out-of-the-box accessibility-friendly features into something that works so well, you'd never even suspect it. I've done it myself a time or two. There's more. I feel rather guilty for not coming up with four more things just to round this out to 10 but, I'm sure you get the picture. Bakc to my original question, do you happen to know if KAccessibility actualy offers this sort of thing? If not, do you know or can you point me to docs that would tell me just how much or how little of it can be done with KAccessibility? Best regards, Alex M > Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 21:46:25 -0400 > From: Mackenzie Morgan > To: ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > Subject: > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 3:27 PM, Alex Midence wrote: >> ?I guess, with >> Ubuntu, there is Xubuntu and Kubuntu. ?I may be in a position to find >> out for myself how KDE is coming along but the others are a mystery to >> me. > > Kubuntu 11.04 does not include KAccessible (screenreader for Qt-based > apps) but it is available in the archive. I intend to make it part of > the default install for 11.10. The Qt AT-SPI2 bridge is incomplete at > the moment, so for now it is necessary to use Orca for GTK apps and > KAccessible for Qt ones. > > -- > Mackenzie Morgan > > > > ------------------------------ > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > > > End of Ubuntu-accessibility Digest, Vol 66, Issue 7 > *************************************************** > From macoafi at gmail.com Mon May 9 13:53:56 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 09:53:56 -0400 Subject: Desktops other than gnome In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Alex Midence wrote: > Hi, Mackenzie, > > If you plan to include KAccessible in the 11.10 release of Kubuntu, do > you think there is a way to create a hotkey that would launch it?  For > instance, in Vinux, we have either alt-control o or shift control o > which runs Orca no matter where you are in Gnome including the gdm > login screen.  This way, if something ever breaks speech or, hangs it > up, you can always restart the screen reader without having to worry > about being in the right place to type in its name. Oh, thanks! I'll put that on the list of adjustments to Kubuntu defaults. A default shortcut would be great! The plan so far was to mimic the Ubuntu installer: if the system is installed with the screenreader on, enable it by default. However, I have no idea whether it can run during KDM. I haven't tried it yet. When running on the desktop it has a tray icon (which...well...) and you can choose to make it speak. Having a keyboard shortcut to start it would necessitate that QT_ACCESSIBILTY=1 be set by default on all sessions. > I was thinking > that such an option would let somebody start hearing their system talk > from the very outset.  Also, I'm a bit startled by what appears to be > a statement that KAccessibility is a screen reader.  I thought it was > an accessibility api. QAccessible is the API. KAccessible is the screenreader that interacts with QAccessible. Does this mean that it is a full-fledged screen > reading solution that lets you read the screen in a controled manner > like speakup, orca and CO.?  I was under the impression that this > wasn't the case in KDE which is why no blind people that I know of use > it right now. KAccessible was written in the last year. KDE 4.6 is the first to have it, so Natty is our first release where it could possibly work. > If it reads only a few things, I wonder what would need > to be done to it to flesh it out.  To have a proper screne reader, you > need a few things: It can read any Qt or KDE widget that is based on a base-Qt widget. Custom KDE widgets that are "from scratch" are still in the lurch. This would include the terminal portion of Konsole and also KHTML. Terminals have their own screenreaders though, right? < snip list > > There's more.  I feel rather guilty for not coming up with four more > things just to round this out to 10 but, I'm sure you get the picture. >  Bakc to my original question, do you happen to know if KAccessibility > actualy offers this sort of thing?  If not, do you know or can you > point me to docs that would tell me just how much or how little of it > can be done with KAccessibility? I've only played with it a little bit, so I'm not really sure about all that. I'd suggest asking on the KDE-Accessibility mailing list. Seb Sauer is the main (only?) developer on KAccessible. -- Mackenzie Morgan From alex.midence at gmail.com Wed May 11 15:53:47 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 10:53:47 -0500 Subject: Desktops other than gnome Message-ID: Hello, MacKenzie, I'm very you liked the suggestion of the hotkey for starting the screen reader and that you are thinking about including it in the next Kubuntu release. You ask if there are terminal screen readers. Yes, in this case, the screen reader is Yasr. Orca does read a terminal, but it's the Gnome terminal and not so well as yasr does. The other command line screen reader is Speakup but that is for pure Console mode only not a terminal inside an x-windows system like KDE or Gnome. I will look into contacting the kde accessibility list to put my questions to the dev for the Screen Reader. Thanks for all the info. Alex M Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 09:53:56 -0400 > From: Mackenzie Morgan > To: ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > Subject: Re: Desktops other than gnome > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Alex Midence wrote: >> Hi, Mackenzie, >> >> If you plan to include KAccessible in the 11.10 release of Kubuntu, do >> you think there is a way to create a hotkey that would launch it? ?For >> instance, in Vinux, we have either alt-control o or shift control o >> which runs Orca no matter where you are in Gnome including the gdm >> login screen. ?This way, if something ever breaks speech or, hangs it >> up, you can always restart the screen reader without having to worry >> about being in the right place to type in its name. > > Oh, thanks! I'll put that on the list of adjustments to Kubuntu > defaults. A default shortcut would be great! The plan so far was to > mimic the Ubuntu installer: if the system is installed with the > screenreader on, enable it by default. However, I have no idea > whether it can run during KDM. I haven't tried it yet. When running > on the desktop it has a tray icon (which...well...) and you can choose > to make it speak. Having a keyboard shortcut to start it would > necessitate that QT_ACCESSIBILTY=1 be set by default on all sessions. > >> I was thinking >> that such an option would let somebody start hearing their system talk >> from the very outset. ?Also, I'm a bit startled by what appears to be >> a statement that KAccessibility is a screen reader. ?I thought it was >> an accessibility api. > > QAccessible is the API. KAccessible is the screenreader that > interacts with QAccessible. > > Does this mean that it is a full-fledged screen >> reading solution that lets you read the screen in a controled manner >> like speakup, orca and CO.? ?I was under the impression that this >> wasn't the case in KDE which is why no blind people that I know of use >> it right now. > > KAccessible was written in the last year. KDE 4.6 is the first to > have it, so Natty is our first release where it could possibly work. > >>?If it reads only a few things, I wonder what would need >> to be done to it to flesh it out. ?To have a proper screne reader, you >> need a few things: > > It can read any Qt or KDE widget that is based on a base-Qt widget. > Custom KDE widgets that are "from scratch" are still in the lurch. > This would include the terminal portion of Konsole and also KHTML. > Terminals have their own screenreaders though, right? > > < snip list > > >> There's more. ?I feel rather guilty for not coming up with four more >> things just to round this out to 10 but, I'm sure you get the picture. >> ?Bakc to my original question, do you happen to know if KAccessibility >> actualy offers this sort of thing? ?If not, do you know or can you >> point me to docs that would tell me just how much or how little of it >> can be done with KAccessibility? > > I've only played with it a little bit, so I'm not really sure about > all that. I'd suggest asking on the KDE-Accessibility mailing list. > Seb Sauer is the main (only?) developer on KAccessible. > > -- > Mackenzie Morgan From macoafi at gmail.com Wed May 11 19:15:18 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 15:15:18 -0400 Subject: Desktops other than gnome In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Alex Midence wrote: > Hello, MacKenzie, > > I'm very you liked the suggestion of the hotkey for starting the > screen reader and that you are thinking about including it in the next >  Kubuntu release. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to do it in 11.10. To make it possible to just flip a screenreader on would require that QT_ACCESSIBILITY environment variable be set to 1 in *all* sessions as a default. With Qt-AT-SPI installed, this'd cause a huge performance impact because Qt-AT-SPI is too new to have been optimised yet. At some point, the need for QT_ACCESSIBILITY to be set before *anything* starts running (ie, at session startup) will go away, but there's no consensus yet on how to do that. I'm hopeful about Qt folks figuring out a better solution in time for 12.04. -- Mackenzie Morgan From alex.midence at gmail.com Thu May 12 13:40:47 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 08:40:47 -0500 Subject: Ubuntu-accessibility Digest, Vol 66, Issue 9 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi, MacKenzie, > Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to do it in 11.10. To make > it possible to just flip a screenreader on would require that > QT_ACCESSIBILITY environment variable be set to 1 in *all* sessions as > a default. With Qt-AT-SPI installed, this'd cause a huge performance > impact because Qt-AT-SPI is too new to have been optimised yet. I understand. Here's another one for you then: Could a script be used that would insert the needed lines into the configuration file for KDE? Any user who wanted to activate it could run it from a console session. It could have a name like ACTIVATE-SCREENREADER and require root priveleges to be run. The fact that it is written in upper case and that it is a long string along with it's requiring sudo before it is run should preclude any possibility of someone running it accidentally. It would have the benefit of something being there for those who needed it which would automate all the steps necessary for it to get set up while not impacting those who don't in any way other than having a small text file on their system (doesn't have to be long). It would allow for more people to be able to test the screen reader. Just conjecturing. Thanks for having been willing to consider the hotkey feature. From macoafi at gmail.com Thu May 12 13:57:43 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 09:57:43 -0400 Subject: Ubuntu-accessibility Digest, Vol 66, Issue 9 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Alex Midence wrote: >> Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to do it in 11.10.  To make >> it possible to just flip a screenreader on would require that >> QT_ACCESSIBILITY environment variable be set to 1 in *all* sessions as >> a default.  With Qt-AT-SPI installed, this'd cause a huge performance >> impact because Qt-AT-SPI is too new to have been optimised yet. > > > I understand.  Here's another one for you then: > > Could a script be used that would insert the needed lines into the > configuration file for KDE?  Any user who wanted to activate it could > run it from a console session.  It could have a name like > ACTIVATE-SCREENREADER and require root priveleges to be run.  The fact > that it is written in upper case and that it is a long string along > with it's requiring sudo before it is run should preclude any > possibility of someone running it accidentally. Actually, you wouldn't want it to be sudo, because you don't want your user's KDE config files to be owned by root. A regular script should work fine though. I really doubt anyone's going to accidentally type "kscreenreader --enable" and have no idea why the computer is talking to them later. There was discussion in the kde-accessibility IRC channel yesterday of integrating it into KAccess (the KControl Module for turning on various accessibility features) as well. Fregl (QAccessiblity developer at Nokia) is at a KDE-and-GNOME-together accessibility hackfest where today they are going to be brainstorming how to make it possible to enable this stuff at runtime, in which case the hotkey thing would then be possible. -- Mackenzie Morgan From ka1cey at gmail.com Thu May 12 14:33:59 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 10:33:59 -0400 Subject: [orca-list] When I doing any Orca laptop binding command, capslock always turned on/off In-Reply-To: <4DCBEDEC.70902@pickup.hu> References: <4DCBEDEC.70902@pickup.hu> Message-ID: <4DCBEFD7.3050201@gmail.com> Yes, I can consistently reproduce this issue! It is, most certainly, a Natty thing, that has not happened in previous Ubuntu versions. Kind Regards, Dave On 05/12/2011 10:25 AM, Hammer Attila wrote: > Hy, > > I see a little disturb problem with my Natty system, with perhaps > machine specific: > I using Orca with laptop layout. When I press an Orca keystroke, caps > lock is always toggling on/off. I think prewious locked the caps lock > with off state, and only possible toggling caps lock if the user press > Orca+Backspace key and Capslock key. > Anybody possible reproduce this issue? > How can possible disabling this working method? If I remember right > have a xmodmap command with disable Capslock switching. > In natty I possible reproducing this issue with Orca 3.0.0 factory > packaged version and Orca 3.1.1 master development version. > > Attila > _______________________________________________ > orca-list mailing list > orca-list at gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list > Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca. > The manual is at > http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html > The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions > Netiquette Guidelines are at > http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines > Log bugs and feature requests at http://bugzilla.gnome.org > Find out how to help at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/HowCanIHelp From martin at dc.cis.okstate.edu Fri May 13 21:05:08 2011 From: martin at dc.cis.okstate.edu (Martin McCormick) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 16:05:08 -0500 Subject: orca Message-ID: <201105132105.p4DL588M028137@x.it.okstate.edu> I am the one who posted several messages some weeks ago with the Dell Pentium 4 of 2004 vintage that has no sound what so ever with ubuntu10 or 11 even though the bootup process appears to find the sound card. What I am curious about is what has changed in these later versions that makes this otherwise rather normal computer mute in the later versions of ubuntu? I have been told that ubuntu10.10 and 11.4 have a couple of sound effects that one may hear while booting but these two versions do not produce so much as a faint pop when trying to boot the live CD in to orca and gnome. As I said several weeks ago, the desktop comes up every time and the orca setup instructions appear on screen, but there is not a sound. As it stands right now, the computer stands silently. The choices right now are the old Vinux2.x which works perfectly but is not supported, another Vinux-like live CD that comes right up talking but can't find the IDE hard drive if one were to install it or ubuntu 11.4 which is what I really wanted but which I truly have tried everything on and have put the whole thing on hold for now as it just doesn't seem like it will ever work in its present configuration. There are 8 USB ports on this computer but no floppy drive so it is more like newer systems than older ones. It's not quite new enough, however, to allow one to boot off of a thumb drive. The discussion, here about having some sort of small file or script to start speech from boot without the user having to do anything is a great possibility. One could put some sort of token on a thumb drive that the boot process could look for that says, I want speech as soon as possible. No more listening to the drive until it gets quiet and hoping for the best. As for my particular system, something goes wrong during the audio configuration process such that the system must think it is set right, but it is not. There are never any error messages printed on the screen and a look at sound card settings via amixer shows a sound card that looks like it is ready for use. The volume levels are up and one would think it should make noise, but nothing at all is heard. It seems to me that a possibility might be some sort of sound diagnostic that tries several possible configurations and does a sort of "Can you hear me now?" When you hear it, hit a key and that's what we run with. The automatic setup is obviously not working on this system. Just some thoughts. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK Systems Engineer OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group mattias writes: > only my computer or are orca verry unstable on natty? > sometimes orca completely chrashes the only solution are loging out or > restart > the desktop itself work > > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > > From macoafi at gmail.com Fri May 13 21:54:26 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 17:54:26 -0400 Subject: orca In-Reply-To: <201105132105.p4DL588M028137@x.it.okstate.edu> References: <201105132105.p4DL588M028137@x.it.okstate.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Martin McCormick wrote: >        I am the one who posted several messages some weeks ago > with the Dell Pentium 4 of 2004 vintage that has no sound what > so ever with ubuntu10 or 11 even though the bootup process > appears to find the sound card. > >        What I am curious about is what has changed in these > later versions that makes this otherwise rather normal computer > mute in the later versions of ubuntu? Did it work with prior versions of Ubuntu? Could you give a link to the output of running this script: http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-driver.git;a=blob_plain;f=utils/alsa-info.sh (note it must be run with bash, not plain sh). This could be a driver problem. -- Mackenzie Morgan From milton at tomaatnet.nl Sat May 14 21:33:40 2011 From: milton at tomaatnet.nl (Milton) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 23:33:40 +0200 Subject: pidgin and twitter Message-ID: <10B3FEFC63B740949FE827FA47068E4A@milton> Hi, In Lucid and Maverick I tried Skype through Pidgin and now I would like to use Twitter in Pidgin. I installed pidgin-microblog. But when I start Pidgin I only get the list of Skype contacts. Do somebody knows how I can get to set my twitter account in Pidgin? Thanks in advance. Milton -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cprofitt at ubuntu.com Sat May 14 16:03:36 2011 From: cprofitt at ubuntu.com (Charles Profitt) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 12:03:36 -0400 Subject: Ubuntu Beginners Team -- Summer of Documentation Message-ID: <1305389016.2296.6.camel@Tardis-T500> Hello all: The Ubuntu Beginners Team is preparing for its 4th annual summer of documentation. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/FocusGroups/Docs/SoD2011 If you have pages that you know need revision please feel free to add it to the list and we will get someone assigned to the page with a target completion date of no later than September 1st. Thanks, Charles -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From ka1cey at gmail.com Mon May 16 22:34:04 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 18:34:04 -0400 Subject: Trouble with Pidgin-skype plugin in Natty Message-ID: <4DD1A65C.7020608@gmail.com> Hi, all! I recently upgraded to Natty and installed Skype, Pidgin, and the subject plugin, all from the official repositories. I am able to make Skype calls and, sometimes, be heard. When my recipient picks up, I also get a dialogue asking me to accept or reject, as if the call were in-coming. When someone tries calling me, I get the ring and in-coming call dialogue. When I choose "accept", the call does not get answered. In an exchange of Skype text messages, I can see my messages in the conversation window, but not those from the other party. Is there something I haven't set up right? This arrangement works in all Ubuntu versions up to and including Maverick. I cannot access Skype without this protocol plugin, since Orca screen reader does not work with QT4 objects. Thanks for any help, Dave Hunt From vilmar at informal.com.br Tue May 17 12:02:59 2011 From: vilmar at informal.com.br (=?UTF-8?B?Sm9zw6kgVmlsbWFyIEVzdMOhY2lvIGRlIFNvdXph?=) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 09:02:59 -0300 Subject: pidgin and twitter In-Reply-To: <10B3FEFC63B740949FE827FA47068E4A@milton> References: <10B3FEFC63B740949FE827FA47068E4A@milton> Message-ID: <4DD263F3.7080508@informal.com.br> Hi. Did you add the your twitter account to pidgin? You do that in the same way you add other accounts. On 05/14/2011 06:33 PM, Milton wrote: > Hi, > In Lucid and Maverick I tried Skype through Pidgin and now I would like to use Twitter in Pidgin. I installed pidgin-microblog. But when I start Pidgin I only get the list of Skype contacts. > Do somebody knows how I can get to set my twitter account in Pidgin? > Thanks in advance. > Milton > From guyster104 at att.net Tue May 17 18:37:11 2011 From: guyster104 at att.net (Guy Schlosser) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 14:37:11 -0400 Subject: Trouble with Pidgin-skype plugin in Natty In-Reply-To: <4DD1A65C.7020608@gmail.com> References: <4DD1A65C.7020608@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4DD2C057.3040807@att.net> I can confirm part of Dave's problem with the pidgin-skype plugin in Natty. I have no problems with audio calls, but when I try and text chat with someone on skype, I can see the messages I send out, but no incoming messages are displayed. Is there a work around for seeing the messages people send you? Any help would definitely be appreciated. Thanks, Guy On 05/16/2011 06:34 PM, Dave Hunt wrote: > Hi, all! > > I recently upgraded to Natty and installed Skype, Pidgin, and the > subject plugin, all from the official repositories. I am able to make > Skype calls and, sometimes, be heard. When my recipient picks up, I > also get a dialogue asking me to accept or reject, as if the call were > in-coming. When someone tries calling me, I get the ring and > in-coming call dialogue. When I choose "accept", the call does not > get answered. In an exchange of Skype text messages, I can see my > messages in the conversation window, but not those from the other > party. Is there something I haven't set up right? This arrangement > works in all Ubuntu versions up to and including Maverick. I cannot > access Skype without this protocol plugin, since Orca screen reader > does not work with QT4 objects. > > > Thanks for any help, > > > Dave Hunt > > > > From matthias.clasen at gmail.com Tue May 17 11:00:59 2011 From: matthias.clasen at gmail.com (Matthias Clasen) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 07:00:59 -0400 Subject: Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility In-Reply-To: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> References: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Frederik Gladhorn wrote: > Hi, > sorry for cross-posting. I would just like to have this looked at by everyone > so we can simply implement it. > > During the ATK/AT-SPI hackfest it came up a few times that we have no solution > to enable accessibility (eg Screen Readers) on the fly. The conclusion was that > using DBus would fit everyones needs and make it easy for third partys to > adapt. > > > Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility I'm not sure how things work on the KDE side, but for GTK+ based applications, this does not really solve the problem. Since GTK+ a11y implementation lives in a module that needs to be loaded by all applications before a11y tools talk to it. We can load the module at runtime, but at that time widgets may already have instantiated no-op a11y implementations. From gladhorn at kde.org Mon May 16 21:29:39 2011 From: gladhorn at kde.org (Frederik Gladhorn) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 23:29:39 +0200 Subject: Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility Message-ID: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> Hi, sorry for cross-posting. I would just like to have this looked at by everyone so we can simply implement it. During the ATK/AT-SPI hackfest it came up a few times that we have no solution to enable accessibility (eg Screen Readers) on the fly. The conclusion was that using DBus would fit everyones needs and make it easy for third partys to adapt. Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility Problem description: We need a cross-desktop solution to dynamically activate the accessibility framework. Ideally we could switch on accessibility functionallity by default. At the moment it seems that most solutions use quite a few resources, therefor the best short-term solution would be to find a way to enable accessibility on the fly. As an example this is helpful when on first time use or when the computer is shared with users that have no accessibility needs. Currently Gnome requires the user to log out and back in. KDE has no solution. Proposed solution: To activate accessibility, a dbus notification is sent to inform about the state of the accessibility framework. The enabled status of the accessibility framework can be queried via the same mechanism. A setter is also provided to activate the accessibility framework desktop wide. The DBus interface contains a property that says whether accessibility is enabled, has a notification signal and a method to enable accessibility. Currently the at-spi2 dbus registry would be the best place for this functionallity. DBus service: org.a11y.Bus Proposed DBus interface: Gnome could couple this with the existing gconf notification. For KDE the system settings module will have to be extended. Greetings, Frederik From undifined at gmail.com Wed May 18 15:05:23 2011 From: undifined at gmail.com (UndiFineD) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 17:05:23 +0200 Subject: Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> Message-ID: Currently in Ubuntu Natty 11.04, Dbus in compiz does not work perfectly. might be better in Ubuntu Classic. 2011/5/17 Matthias Clasen : > On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Frederik Gladhorn wrote: >> Hi, >> sorry for cross-posting. I would just like to have this looked at by everyone >> so we can simply implement it. >> >> During the ATK/AT-SPI hackfest it came up a few times that we have no solution >> to enable accessibility (eg Screen Readers) on the fly. The conclusion was that >> using DBus would fit everyones needs and make it easy for third partys to >> adapt. >> >> >> Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility > > I'm not sure how things work on the KDE side, but for GTK+ based > applications, this does not really solve the problem. Since GTK+ a11y > implementation lives in a module that needs to be loaded by all > applications before a11y tools talk to it. We can load the module at > runtime, but at that time widgets may already have instantiated no-op > a11y implementations. > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Keimpe de Jong (UndiFineD) From macoafi at gmail.com Wed May 18 15:40:32 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 11:40:32 -0400 Subject: Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:05 AM, UndiFineD wrote: > Currently in Ubuntu Natty 11.04, Dbus in compiz does not work perfectly. > might be better in Ubuntu Classic. This wouldn't apply til 11.10 or maybe even 12.04. Whatever's wrong with DBus should get fixed though. Has a bug report been filed? -- Mackenzie Morgan From undifined at gmail.com Wed May 18 19:38:40 2011 From: undifined at gmail.com (UndiFineD) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 21:38:40 +0200 Subject: Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> Message-ID: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/749084 2011/5/18 Mackenzie Morgan : > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:05 AM, UndiFineD wrote: >> Currently in Ubuntu Natty 11.04, Dbus in compiz does not work perfectly. >> might be better in Ubuntu Classic. > > This wouldn't apply til 11.10 or maybe even 12.04.  Whatever's wrong > with DBus should get fixed though.  Has a bug report been filed? > > -- > Mackenzie Morgan > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > -- Met vriendelijke groeten, Keimpe de Jong (UndiFineD) From macoafi at gmail.com Wed May 18 21:21:47 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 17:21:47 -0400 Subject: Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 3:38 PM, UndiFineD wrote: > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/749084 The interface Frederik outline above isn't under the org.freedeskop.compiz namespace, so I'm not sure this would actually block starting AT-SPI stuff. CC'ing him for input. -- Mackenzie Morgan From gladhorn at kde.org Wed May 18 22:57:07 2011 From: gladhorn at kde.org (Frederik Gladhorn) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 00:57:07 +0200 Subject: Proposal: DBus activation of Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <201105162329.39869.gladhorn@kde.org> Message-ID: <201105190057.07041.gladhorn@kde.org> On Wednesday 18. May 2011 23.21.47 Mackenzie Morgan wrote: > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 3:38 PM, UndiFineD wrote: > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/749084 > > The interface Frederik outline above isn't under the > org.freedeskop.compiz namespace, so I'm not sure this would actually > block starting AT-SPI stuff. CC'ing him for input. Sorry, but I don't understand how this is related. Unless compiz disables dbus completely, this should not matter. Cheers, Frederik From danielhollocher at gmail.com Thu May 19 01:20:22 2011 From: danielhollocher at gmail.com (Daniel Hollocher) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 21:20:22 -0400 Subject: [ubuntu-us-ma] Trouble with Pidgin-skype plugin in Natty In-Reply-To: <4DD2C057.3040807@att.net> References: <4DD1A65C.7020608@gmail.com> <4DD2C057.3040807@att.net> Message-ID: Hey guys, I poked around this just a little. I noticed an upstream bug report with the suggestion to try out the latest version, so... Try the updated package from here!: http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/pidgin-skype As far as I can tell that is safe to try. Good luck, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From milton at tomaatnet.nl Fri May 20 11:25:46 2011 From: milton at tomaatnet.nl (Milton) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 13:25:46 +0200 Subject: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? Message-ID: <0660C4729BFC4B098627B2E16C3E8BF0@milton> Hi, I need your advice because I have no knowledge about. We will donate a computer to a smaal organization running a house for visually impaired children and orphans. They do'nt have access to the internet. So the computer, of course with the help of Orca, can be a great help for education etc. and also to play some games. I installed Maverick and Orca 3.1.1 but can somebody confirm if this is the better choice than Lucid LTS? I think the computer will be used untill the hardware dies without updating in the meanwhile. Thanks in advance. Milton -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marionpeter at gmx.net Fri May 20 11:35:20 2011 From: marionpeter at gmx.net (Marion Peterreins) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 13:35:20 +0200 Subject: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? In-Reply-To: <0660C4729BFC4B098627B2E16C3E8BF0@milton> References: <0660C4729BFC4B098627B2E16C3E8BF0@milton> Message-ID: <4DD651F8.8000303@gmx.net> Milton: I've been using lucid with Orca 2.30.2 for several months now and it works quite fine. Best wishes, Marion! Am 20.05.2011 13:25, schrieb Milton: > Hi, > I need your advice because I have no knowledge about. > We will donate a computer to a smaal organization running a house for > visually impaired children and orphans. They do'nt have access to the > internet. > So the computer, of course with the help of Orca, can be a great help > for education etc. and also to play some games. > I installed Maverick and Orca 3.1.1 but can somebody confirm if this > is the better choice than Lucid LTS? > I think the computer will be used untill the hardware dies without > updating in the meanwhile. > Thanks in advance. > Milton -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pmikeal at comcast.net Fri May 20 11:37:16 2011 From: pmikeal at comcast.net (Pia) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 07:37:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? In-Reply-To: <0660C4729BFC4B098627B2E16C3E8BF0@milton> References: <0660C4729BFC4B098627B2E16C3E8BF0@milton> Message-ID: I would get Lucid and update it to as recent of an installation as possible by downloading the 10.04.2 iso and once you have everything installed that you need, I would run an aptitude full-upgrade My reasoning for this is that even though they may never update it again, Lucid, being an LTS is more focused on stability rather than features, and you are going to want a computer that has as little trouble as possible without a tech support person right there and no Internet connection. Also, I have found Lucid to work beautifully with speakup. Orca isn't really developed as rapidly as it was when Willy was in charge of it and so, it isn't like in the better days when a new distro release meant leaps and bounds forward in the screen reader department. So, I also have found Orca works about as good on both. HTH, Pia On Fri, 20 May 2011, Milton wrote: >     Hi, > I need your advice because I have no knowledge about. > We will donate a computer to a smaal organization running a house for > visually impaired children and orphans. They do'nt have access to the > internet. > So the computer, of course with the help of Orca, can be a great help for > education etc. and also to play some games. > I installed Maverick and Orca 3.1.1 but can somebody confirm if this is the > better choice than Lucid LTS? > I think the computer will be used untill the hardware dies without updating > in the meanwhile. > Thanks in advance. > Milton > > From milton at tomaatnet.nl Fri May 20 14:34:00 2011 From: milton at tomaatnet.nl (Milton) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 16:34:00 +0200 Subject: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? References: <0660C4729BFC4B098627B2E16C3E8BF0@milton> Message-ID: Am I right that speakup is only for the virtual console? Is there a tutorial how to install and use it? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pia" To: "Milton" Cc: Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 1:37 PM Subject: Re: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? >I would get Lucid and update it to as recent of an installation as > possible by downloading the 10.04.2 iso and once you have everything > installed that you need, I would run an > aptitude full-upgrade > My reasoning for this is that even though they may never update it again, > Lucid, being an LTS is more focused on stability rather than features, and > you are going to want a computer that has as little trouble as possible > without a tech support person right there and no Internet connection. > Also, I have found Lucid to work beautifully with speakup. Orca isn't > really developed as rapidly as it was when Willy was in charge of it and > so, it isn't like in the better days when a new distro release meant leaps > and bounds forward in the screen reader department. So, I also have found > Orca works about as good on both. > > HTH, > > Pia > > On Fri, 20 May 2011, Milton wrote: > >> Hi, >> I need your advice because I have no knowledge about. >> We will donate a computer to a smaal organization running a house for >> visually impaired children and orphans. They do'nt have access to the >> internet. >> So the computer, of course with the help of Orca, can be a great help for >> education etc. and also to play some games. >> I installed Maverick and Orca 3.1.1 but can somebody confirm if this is >> the >> better choice than Lucid LTS? >> I think the computer will be used untill the hardware dies without >> updating >> in the meanwhile. >> Thanks in advance. >> Milton >> >> From ka1cey at gmail.com Fri May 20 18:34:36 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 14:34:36 -0400 Subject: Listening to my Music Collection in Natty? Message-ID: <4DD6B43C.3090804@gmail.com> Hi, group! When I try using rhythmbox, my music library and radio stations are not saved between sessions; player rebuilds the database on each launch, slowing Orca during this process. When I use banchee, my entire system seems unresponsive. I even tried killing Orca before launching Banchee, and left the machine for about 40 minutes. On my return, I found the fan running at top speed, and no keyboard input possible; I had to just pull the power switch. What are people using, and how? Oh, BTW, I'm using Natty, having installed with the blindness profile and running the Classic Gnome desktop. Thanks, Dave From aarg at shaw.ca Fri May 20 21:23:05 2011 From: aarg at shaw.ca (David Csercsics) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 14:23:05 -0700 Subject: Listening to my Music Collection in Natty? In-Reply-To: <4DD6B43C.3090804@gmail.com> References: <4DD6B43C.3090804@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20110520212305.GA8045@really.lan> I use mpd and mpc or mplayer depending on what I'm doing but then I don't mind command line stuff. mpc is fairly easy to figure out and the man page is very informative. mpd is not hard to configure either. mpc is just a plain command line app so it should run fine in gnome terminal or from a script or whatever. There are gtk mpd clients as well though I have not bothered to play with them. I have a very large music database which rhythmbox chokes on nicely but mpd has no trouble with. From milton at tomaatnet.nl Fri May 20 22:12:03 2011 From: milton at tomaatnet.nl (Milton) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 00:12:03 +0200 Subject: Fw: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? Message-ID: I'm sorry, I forgot to reply to the list. Milton Hi Dave, Pia and Marion, Thanks for helping me out. I did not thought of Vinux. So I did a fresh install of Vinux 3.0.1 and also install Orca 3.1.1. So right now I have the stability of Lucid and the features of Maverick. Milton ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Hunt To: Milton Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 4:43 PM Subject: Re: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? I haven't tried all the edubuntu apps, but suspect that most are not accessible with Orca. Most of them are very game-like. I volunteer with a group of Harvard Medical School folks who install onto donated laptops and send them to orphanage schools in Latin America. The schools have no internet and limited space, hense the laptops and notebooks. Most of the students have no need of accessibility; it gets turned off after I do my installs. I often use a Vinux live cd for initial testing, shredding of the hard drive, etc. When I decide that a machine checks out, I do a regular install, with blindness profile. After applying os updates and installing the Edubuntu meta-package, I do a final bit of testing, then pronounce the machine fit. Donations with less than 256 mb ram get Knoppix. Cheers, Dave On 05/20/2011 10:31 AM, Milton wrote: How is Orca doing in Edubuntu? ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Hunt To: Milton Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 4:13 PM Subject: Re: for special purpose Lucid or Maverick? Hi, I install edubuntu for similar purposes and find that Lucid or Maverick will suffice. Best, Dave On 05/20/2011 07:25 AM, Milton wrote: Hi, I need your advice because I have no knowledge about. We will donate a computer to a smaal organization running a house for visually impaired children and orphans. They do'nt have access to the internet. So the computer, of course with the help of Orca, can be a great help for education etc. and also to play some games. I installed Maverick and Orca 3.1.1 but can somebody confirm if this is the better choice than Lucid LTS? I think the computer will be used untill the hardware dies without updating in the meanwhile. Thanks in advance. Milton -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hajour1973 at gmail.com Sun May 22 01:01:24 2011 From: hajour1973 at gmail.com (manuela popping) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 03:01:24 +0200 Subject: resigning Message-ID: i have tried to stay but i am just not able to see all lose from each other. i will be everytime remembered on bad situations what will cause also that feelings come back. in strong way. i cant say which situations because rules are pm stays pm and private even in channel stays private. so i have no choice then to leave the team. i only will go work now by ubuntu-nl. it go you all well and goodluck with your goal greetings manuèla popping nickname hajour -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hammera at pickup.hu Sun May 22 07:21:04 2011 From: hammera at pickup.hu (Hammer Attila) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 09:21:04 +0200 Subject: General Ubiquity installer accessibility related question Message-ID: <4DD8B960.7020802@pickup.hu> Hy, For example when I installed an Ubuntu 10.04 release my netbook for Orca, my wife see an interesting think for partition editing dialog: When I change a partition filesystem type, Orca spokening different filesystem type text, but the screen presenting a translated filesystem type text for hungarian language. I think hungarian language is translated some filesystem type texts, for example the swap partition filesystem type. So, Orca some time spokening english named filesystem types. Why happening this? This is an Ubiquity Orca script issue, or selected filesystem types get Orca with accessible names, and this filesystem types accessible names not marked for translation? I very surprised when my wife says this information. Attila From themuso at ubuntu.com Sun May 22 22:57:20 2011 From: themuso at ubuntu.com (Luke Yelavich) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 08:57:20 +1000 Subject: General Ubiquity installer accessibility related question In-Reply-To: <4DD8B960.7020802@pickup.hu> References: <4DD8B960.7020802@pickup.hu> Message-ID: <20110522225720.GB3627@strigy.yelavich.home> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 05:21:04PM EST, Hammer Attila wrote: > Hy, > > For example when I installed an Ubuntu 10.04 release my netbook for > Orca, my wife see an interesting think for partition editing dialog: > When I change a partition filesystem type, Orca spokening different > filesystem type text, but the screen presenting a translated > filesystem type text for hungarian language. I think hungarian > language is translated some filesystem type texts, for example the > swap partition filesystem type. > So, Orca some time spokening english named filesystem types. Yes, I suspect something somewhere, I am not sure exactly what, hasn't been marked for translation. its small things like this that I would like to try and address with the ubiquity accessibility work thats going to be done for Oneiric. Luke From milton at tomaatnet.nl Mon May 23 09:44:06 2011 From: milton at tomaatnet.nl (Milton) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 11:44:06 +0200 Subject: pidgin and twitter References: <10B3FEFC63B740949FE827FA47068E4A@milton> <4DD263F3.7080508@informal.com.br> Message-ID: <587D68B4BC8445E5A877D0A425882D5B@milton> Thanks, I was looking first for the protocols. But I manage to add my Twitter account. ----- Original Message ----- From: "José Vilmar Estácio de Souza" To: Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 2:02 PM Subject: Re: pidgin and twitter > Hi. > Did you add the your twitter account to pidgin? > You do that in the same way you add other accounts. > > > On 05/14/2011 06:33 PM, Milton wrote: >> Hi, >> In Lucid and Maverick I tried Skype through Pidgin and now I would like >> to use Twitter in Pidgin. I installed pidgin-microblog. But when I start >> Pidgin I only get the list of Skype contacts. >> Do somebody knows how I can get to set my twitter account in Pidgin? >> Thanks in advance. >> Milton >> > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility From ka1cey at gmail.com Mon May 23 20:09:31 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 16:09:31 -0400 Subject: My Experience with Stock Ubuntu 11.04 and accessibility Message-ID: <4DDABEFB.3070306@gmail.com> Below, please find my impressions of running this release. I'm using an Asus 1015PE (a netbook) as my work-a-day system. Suggestions and comments welcome! I am running Ubuntu 11.04, but still with classic Gnome. Unlike on the live cd, there are no crashes like we saw, now that I've installed it to hard drive. The machine is not vinucized; that is, I did an eyes-free, independent install from the stock 11.04 image. Orca got screwed up during the animated slide show that runs while the install is in progress. When I got to the final step, I turned Orca off and hit the 'install' button. Then, I just walked away, and came back to the machine after about a half-hour. I assumed all was ready, ejected the usb drive, and rebooted. To my delight, The narwhale came up talking, on the gdm screen. Access to the Indicator Applet (the thing used for setting up wifi, checking the battery, etc, is a bit flaky, but, fortunately, one doesn't need to play with the thing often. I activated keyboard shortcuts for adjusting volume. Next, I added the apt repositories for the Orca daily builds, installed Thunderbird, Drobbox, and a few other things I like. In every stock Ubuntu system I've ever used, Orca won't give access to the gui admin apps, unless one runs them from the terminal, with sudo. The next thing I noticed was that the skype api plugin for empathy and pidgin does not work fully in Natty. I can make calls, send and receive text messages, but cannot accept incoming calls. I hear the ring tone, see the 'accept' dialogue, but attempts to accept do nothing. I have about 12 gb of tunes, mostly in 'mp3' files. In prior Ubuntu distros, I could manage this music collection with the Rhythmbox application. In 11.04, Banshee is the new media player. Before I loaded my music collection, Banshee could open and play streams. Now that the music is in place, Banshee will not fully open, and attempts to run it result in a frozen X session. I installed Rhythmbox for comparison. Rhythmbox will browse my files, create the indices, and play the music. It will not, however, save the database for future sessions. Finally, Something I unwittingly did on Saturday has resulted in a system in which Orca will, sometimes, not start post-login. I get the login drums and talking gdm screen. I log in. I get the post-login music, then, sometimes, nothing. If I wait a minute or more, then manually start Orca, it still won't go. I have to pull the switch and restart; maybe it will work. Well, there, you have it! I'm not sure whether I'll down-grade, change distros, or just make this thing work. I have a stubborn streak that makes the third option most appealing. YMMV, Dave Hunt Twitter and Skype: wx1gdave Tel: 617 319 4491 From phillw at ubuntu.com Mon May 23 23:58:58 2011 From: phillw at ubuntu.com (Phill Whiteside) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 00:58:58 +0100 Subject: Lubuntu and Accessibility Message-ID: Hiyas, much has happened recently, including lubuntu getting clearance for full adoption at 11.10 by Canonical. Whilst I have quietly pushed accessibility (well, maybe not so quietly) as a part of lubuntu, we now need a bit of help off this team. Our specification of the minimal hardware it will run on cannot be broken, nor can our commitment to pre i686 processors. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu >From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it would be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we are committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and has agreed that we should really strive to attain this. We are short of devs who can dedicate resources to this task, so I ask that any of you who can assist do so. I'd really like to see lubuntu 11.10 come out with as much accessibility as is possible on "A Pentium II or Celeron system with 128 MiB of RAM is probably a bottom-line configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with Lubuntu" So, once you've all had your heart attacks and say it cannot be done... the ones who go "hmmm, that is actually possible.." Please make your selves known. Regards, Phill. -- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pmikeal at comcast.net Tue May 24 01:59:26 2011 From: pmikeal at comcast.net (Pia) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 21:59:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I believe this can be done with speakup for speaking the console to blind people. I thin you would also have to use espeak and espeakup as the tts and the middleware because speech-dispatcher as the middleware is just way too much of a resource hog. I am not sure you are going to get the graphical screen reader, orca to be useful on anything but gnome and it is really resource intensive. I am not familiar with apps for those who are not blind, but speakup and brltty for speak and braille respectively, should work. I am willing to see what I can do if you let me know where I can get the development ISO to test. The slowest box I have that I can bring out of retirement here is a K6 II 300mhz. Is that too fast, or is that OK? Thanks, Pia On Tue, 24 May 2011, Phill Whiteside wrote: > Hiyas, > > much has happened recently, including lubuntu getting clearance for full > adoption at 11.10 by Canonical. Whilst I have quietly pushed accessibility > (well, maybe not so quietly) as a part of lubuntu, we now need a bit of help > off this team. > > Our specification of the minimal hardware it will run on cannot be broken, > nor can our commitment to pre i686 processors. > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu > > From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the > opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it would > be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we are > committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and has agreed > that we should really strive to attain this. > > We are short of devs who can dedicate resources to this task, so I ask that > any of you who can assist do so. I'd really like to see lubuntu 11.10 come > out with as much accessibility as is possible on "A Pentium II or Celeron > system with 128 MiB of RAM is probably a bottom-line configuration that may > yield slow yet usable system with Lubuntu" > > So, once you've all had your heart attacks and say it cannot be done... the > ones who go "hmmm, that is actually possible.." Please make your selves > known. > > Regards, > > Phill. > > -- > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw > > From themuso at ubuntu.com Tue May 24 03:14:32 2011 From: themuso at ubuntu.com (Luke Yelavich) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 13:14:32 +1000 Subject: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110524031432.GA28163@strigy.yelavich.home> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 09:58:58AM EST, Phill Whiteside wrote: > >From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the > opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it would > be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we are > committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and has agreed > that we should really strive to attain this. The first thing is making sure LXDE is actually accessible, i.e make sure it has keyboard shortcuts, and supports the launching of the accessibility framework at startup etc. As to using the LXDE GUI with Orca etc, I think the biggest problem here is the use of python. The components of the stack written in c should be performant enough to work, and if they're not, then I am sure upstream would be willing to help try and optimize them a little more, but Orca being python is unfortunately a rather big blocker for this environment. I remember running Orca on a dual Celeron 466 a few years back in GNOME, and it was rather laggy in performance, I.e a quarter to half a second would go by before I got speech feedback from my action. So while I think the goals of getting Lubuntu more accessible are noble, I am not sure it will be possible for it to be doable with acceptable accessibility performance for users. I am not saying don't try, but unless Orca or another screen reader was developed in c, then using orca on LXDE is likely to be somewhat painful. Luke From linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com Tue May 24 03:27:56 2011 From: linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com (Alex H.) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 23:27:56 -0400 Subject: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: <20110524031432.GA28163@strigy.yelavich.home> References: <20110524031432.GA28163@strigy.yelavich.home> Message-ID: Hi, Doesn't Adriane Knoppix run some form of LXDE with Orca? From the little I've used it, it's not slow, but then again I've got much better specs than what we're aiming for in this thread. I agree that running Orca on anything slower than 1.5Ghz is just simply painful, even with the increasing responsiveness of it. It's certainly a resource hog and with a system that slow, might as well just run CLI. I think a more useful goal to pursue would be making XFCE more usable. http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.10/roadmap/accessibility On 5/23/11, Luke Yelavich wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 09:58:58AM EST, Phill Whiteside wrote: >> >From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the >> opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it >> would >> be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we are >> committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and has >> agreed >> that we should really strive to attain this. > > The first thing is making sure LXDE is actually accessible, i.e make sure it > has keyboard shortcuts, and supports the launching of the accessibility > framework at startup etc. As to using the LXDE GUI with Orca etc, I think > the biggest problem here is the use of python. The components of the stack > written in c should be performant enough to work, and if they're not, then I > am sure upstream would be willing to help try and optimize them a little > more, but Orca being python is unfortunately a rather big blocker for this > environment. I remember running Orca on a dual Celeron 466 a few years back > in GNOME, and it was rather laggy in performance, I.e a quarter to half a > second would go by before I got speech feedback from my action. > > So while I think the goals of getting Lubuntu more accessible are noble, I > am not sure it will be possible for it to be doable with acceptable > accessibility performance for users. I am not saying don't try, but unless > Orca or another screen reader was developed in c, then using orca on LXDE is > likely to be somewhat painful. > > Luke > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > From pmikeal at comcast.net Tue May 24 11:18:04 2011 From: pmikeal at comcast.net (Pia) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 07:18:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: <20110524031432.GA28163@strigy.yelavich.home> References: <20110524031432.GA28163@strigy.yelavich.home> Message-ID: The problem with running orca on LXDE is that it really only works well in Gnome and so don't know that its a solution. I have tried to run it on xubuntu which uses XCFE which is a GTK+ based desktop and it still didn't work well enough to be functional, ie, it won't read menues. On Tue, 24 May 2011, Luke Yelavich wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 09:58:58AM EST, Phill Whiteside wrote: >>> From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the >> opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it would >> be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we are >> committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and has agreed >> that we should really strive to attain this. > > The first thing is making sure LXDE is actually accessible, i.e make sure it has keyboard shortcuts, and supports the launching of the accessibility framework at startup etc. As to using the LXDE GUI with Orca etc, I think the biggest problem here is the use of python. The components of the stack written in c should be performant enough to work, and if they're not, then I am sure upstream would be willing to help try and optimize them a little more, but Orca being python is unfortunately a rather big blocker for this environment. I remember running Orca on a dual Celeron 466 a few years back in GNOME, and it was rather laggy in performance, I.e a quarter to half a second would go by before I got speech feedback from my action. > > So while I think the goals of getting Lubuntu more accessible are noble, I am not sure it will be possible for it to be doable with acceptable accessibility performance for users. I am not saying don't try, but unless Orca or another screen reader was developed in c, then using orca on LXDE is likely to be somewhat painful. > > Luke > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > From ka1cey at gmail.com Tue May 24 16:34:49 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:34:49 -0400 Subject: Unity with Orca-- it's almost fully accessible! Message-ID: <4DDBDE29.2070908@gmail.com> Hi, all! I decided to change the desktop, on this trusty netbook, to Unity from Classic Gnome, having remembered decent accessibility when I played with it at a Ubuntu Beta Bug Jam at a Canonical office. In my previous message, you'll recall, I mentioned trouble accessing the indicator applet, where one chooses network connection, checks battery, restarts, etc. I'm happy to report that these menus are easy to find and read when using Unity. I like how they are attached to the menu strip for the focused application. Using that filter string to get quickly to a subset of the items found in Preferences, is very nice, too, so long as one knows what she/he is looking for. For instance, I typed "login screen" into the filter, and found myself right on the "unlock" button. The shortcuts, 'super+0' through 'super+9' are very quick and convenient; What a great idea! Now, here are the things that still need some work, perhaps the team is already aware of these? Context menus for launcher buttons do not speak. The speaking of Unity menu names, as one scrubs with left or right arrow is inconsistent. All Unity menu items (wifi options, volume/mute, etc, are spoken as "checkbox unchecked"; I happen to know what is a checkbox, and what is not, but, this should be fixed. The new-style "places" options do not speak. Partial results in the 'run' dialogue do not speak. Finally, when switching applications with 'alt+tab" or 'alt+shift+tab' keys, Orca will not speak while the modifier key(s) held down. When keys released, Orca, first, speaks the name of the application that had focus, then the name of the newly-focused application. This requires that user memorize the order of applications in the stack, an unnecessary distraction. I hope the above will help Ubuntu's design, development, and QA efforts. Please advise on whether or how I can expand on any of these. Thanks for listening, Dave Hunt (I'm totally blind, BTW) From ka1cey at gmail.com Tue May 24 17:21:32 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 13:21:32 -0400 Subject: How to customize Launcher Toolbar using Orca? Message-ID: <4DDBE91C.4010707@gmail.com> Hi, I'm looking for an accessible way to remove items from my launcher toolbar, and keep others. Since the per-item context menus are not spoken, how can I do this? Thanks, Dave From cjk at teamcharliesangels.com Tue May 24 17:25:45 2011 From: cjk at teamcharliesangels.com (Charlie Kravetz) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 11:25:45 -0600 Subject: Unity with Orca-- it's almost fully accessible! In-Reply-To: <4DDBDE29.2070908@gmail.com> References: <4DDBDE29.2070908@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20110524112545.066d6301@teamcharliesangels.com> On Tue, 24 May 2011 12:34:49 -0400 Dave Hunt wrote: > Hi, all! > > I decided to change the desktop, on this trusty netbook, to Unity from > Classic Gnome, having remembered decent accessibility when I played with > it at a Ubuntu Beta Bug Jam at a Canonical office. > > In my previous message, you'll recall, I mentioned trouble accessing the > indicator applet, where one chooses network connection, checks battery, > restarts, etc. I'm happy to report that these menus are easy to find > and read when using Unity. I like how they are attached to the menu > strip for the focused application. Using that filter string to get > quickly to a subset of the items found in Preferences, is very nice, > too, so long as one knows what she/he is looking for. For instance, I > typed "login screen" into the filter, and found myself right on the > "unlock" button. The shortcuts, 'super+0' through 'super+9' are very > quick and convenient; What a great idea! > > Now, here are the things that still need some work, perhaps the team is > already aware of these? Context menus for launcher buttons do not > speak. The speaking of Unity menu names, as one scrubs with left or > right arrow is inconsistent. All Unity menu items (wifi options, > volume/mute, etc, are spoken as "checkbox unchecked"; I happen to know > what is a checkbox, and what is not, but, this should be fixed. The > new-style "places" options do not speak. Partial results in the 'run' > dialogue do not speak. Finally, when switching applications with > 'alt+tab" or 'alt+shift+tab' keys, Orca will not speak while the > modifier key(s) held down. When keys released, Orca, first, speaks the > name of the application that had focus, then the name of the > newly-focused application. This requires that user memorize the order > of applications in the stack, an unnecessary distraction. > > I hope the above will help Ubuntu's design, development, and QA > efforts. Please advise on whether or how I can expand on any of these. > > > Thanks for listening, > > > Dave Hunt > (I'm totally blind, BTW) > Thank you for the update. We are hoping to address many of these issues in Oneiric. We did run out of time trying to resolve many of these in Natty, but will be working them as soon as possible in Oneiric. Please do continue these tests, as they keep us informed of the progress being made. They also help us ensure we are not missing these things, because we don't always remember everything. -- Charlie Kravetz Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] From apinheiro at igalia.com Tue May 24 23:19:55 2011 From: apinheiro at igalia.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Pi=F1eiro?=) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 01:19:55 +0200 Subject: How to customize Launcher Toolbar using Orca? In-Reply-To: <4DDBE91C.4010707@gmail.com> References: <4DDBE91C.4010707@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4DDC3D1B.3090703@igalia.com> On 05/24/2011 07:21 PM, Dave Hunt wrote: > Hi, > > I'm looking for an accessible way to remove items from my launcher > toolbar, and keep others. Since the per-item context menus are not > spoken, how can I do this? The lack of accessibility support of those per-item context item is already listed as a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/740698 AFAIK, there is no way to do that without those menus. The best option here would be solve that bug. As Charlie Kravetz mentioned on a different mail, we hope to solve this issues on the next ubuntu release. Stay tunned. BR -- API From phillw at ubuntu.com Tue May 24 22:58:56 2011 From: phillw at ubuntu.com (Phill Whiteside) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 23:58:56 +0100 Subject: Fwd: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: <4DDB5D11.5040902@thefudge.net> References: <4DDB5D11.5040902@thefudge.net> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rob Whyte Date: Tue, May 24, 2011 at 8:24 AM Subject: Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility To: Phill Whiteside Hi guys, in my own efforts to get orca better with LXDE I conversed with Klaus Knopper the author of Knoppix. I have put his notes below.. I also tried with nto much success to try and figure out why orca did not work with thunar though it claims to have great gtk support. Please find notes below and hope it is helpful. export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN="gtk" GTK_MODULES="gail:atk-bridge" before starting a GTK program makes it aware of orca as screenreader. You need to start orca as well, of course. The panel containing the menu (lxpanel in our case) will send the "highlighted" menu item to orca automatically if the two variables mentioned before are set before starting lxpanel. The tricky part is to pop up the menu without the mouse. Unfortunately, lxpanel does not have a "hotkey" for this on its own, but the command "lxpanelctl menu" will notify lxpanel to show the menu. Now you add this command to the window managers hotkey list (which is different in compiz-fusion and metacity), and you are there. Once the hotkey (Alt-F1 in Knoppix) is pressed, lxpanelctl menu will be called, and the menu pops up. I did not find a way yet to browse through the dock icons in lxpanel, though it must be possible somehow, since using the mouse will focus the icons and lets orca speak them. Maybe, just the internal link between icons and a hotkey for selecting them is missing. pcmanfm works quite well with orca, though the "desktop background" version of it is not very talkative. If you start the windowed version of pcmanfm, you can switch between canvases with eithger TAB or the cursor keys (sometimes it's not very intuitive to understand which one to use). It should be possible, yet I'm unsure how to make the desktop manager part of pcmanfm put the focus on the first icon on the desktop. Once one item has the focus, you can browse through the desktop icons with the cursor keys. surely pcmanfm could need some accessibility enhancements concerning hotkeys and their documentation. in regards to accessing the panel, The only way I found so far is the "lxpanelctl" command which is to be called by the window manager. Alt-F1 pops up the menu in Knoppix. The hotkey modifications for compiz-fusion and metacity concerning the lxpanel menu is present in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45knoppix. Here is an excerpt: -- case "$STARTUP" in *lxde|lx*) # Need to change Alt_F1 and Alt_F2 hotkeys in order to make LXDE menu accessible sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = Disabled/g' \ -e 's/as_run_command0_key *=.*$/as_run_command0_key = Hiyas, > > much has happened recently, including lubuntu getting clearance for full > adoption at 11.10 by Canonical. Whilst I have quietly pushed > accessibility (well, maybe not so quietly) as a part of lubuntu, we now > need a bit of help off this team. > > Our specification of the minimal hardware it will run on cannot be > broken, nor can our commitment to pre i686 processors. > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu > > From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the > opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it > would be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we > are committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and > has agreed that we should really strive to attain this. > > We are short of devs who can dedicate resources to this task, so I ask > that any of you who can assist do so. I'd really like to see lubuntu > 11.10 come out with as much accessibility as is possible on " A Pentium > II or Celeron system with 128 MiB of RAM is probably a bottom-line > configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with Lubuntu" > > So, once you've all had your heart attacks and say it cannot be done... > the ones who go "hmmm, that is actually possible.." Please make your > selves known. > > Regards, > > Phill. > > -- > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw > > > -- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macoafi at gmail.com Wed May 25 02:41:30 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 22:41:30 -0400 Subject: Feedback about Ubuntu requested Message-ID: When your interaction with other Ubuntu users is entirely made up of developers talking about bugs they need to fix and users seeking support (IRC, forums, bug reports), your perspective changes. It's hard to get a good idea of the big picture. What portion of users are hitting problems in what areas? How do users who've reported bugs feel about the experience? How are the local community teams doing? How's accessibility? That kind of stuff is hard to wrap your head around without metrics. To that end, a bunch of members of the Ubuntu community have worked together to create a survey (that I really hope works nicely with screenreaders) that'll help those of us working on various parts of Ubuntu understand where we need to improve and how we can do better. If you have an opinion on Ubuntu, please take 5 minutes to fill out the following Ubuntu User-Experience survey: http://is.gd/vnPvog Thank you! -- Mackenzie Morgan From pcman.tw at gmail.com Wed May 25 01:44:10 2011 From: pcman.tw at gmail.com (PCMan) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 09:44:10 +0800 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <4DDB5D11.5040902@thefudge.net> Message-ID: For the panel, Brian Cameron has a good idea. He suggested that we can use a different UI for orca. That means, replacing all buttons in the bar with standard GtkButton widget rather than some hand-made ones. This looks ugly, but will have much better usability. If "accessibility mode" is on, we use standard GtkButton with text label rather than current ones with images on them. On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:58 AM, Phill Whiteside wrote: > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Rob Whyte > Date: Tue, May 24, 2011 at 8:24 AM > Subject: Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility > To: Phill Whiteside > > > Hi guys, > in my own efforts to get orca better with LXDE I conversed with Klaus > Knopper the author of Knoppix. > I have put his notes below.. > I also tried with nto much success to try and figure out why orca did not > work with thunar though it claims to have great gtk support. > Please find notes below and hope it is helpful. > > export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN="gtk" GTK_MODULES="gail:atk-bridge" > before starting a GTK program makes it aware of orca as screenreader. > You need to start orca as well, of course. > > The panel containing the menu (lxpanel in our case) will send the > "highlighted" menu item to orca automatically if the two variables > mentioned before are set before starting lxpanel. The tricky part is to > pop up the menu without the mouse. Unfortunately, lxpanel does not have a > "hotkey" for this on its own, but the command "lxpanelctl menu" will > notify lxpanel to show the menu. Now you add this command to the window > managers hotkey list (which is different in compiz-fusion and metacity), > and you are there. Once the hotkey (Alt-F1 in Knoppix) is pressed, > lxpanelctl menu will be called, and the menu pops up. > > I did not find a way yet to browse through the dock icons in lxpanel, > though it must be possible somehow, since using the mouse will focus the > icons and lets orca speak them. Maybe, just the internal link between > icons and a hotkey for selecting them is missing. > > pcmanfm works quite well with orca, though the "desktop background" > version of it is not very talkative. If you start the windowed version > of pcmanfm, you can switch between canvases with eithger TAB or the > cursor keys (sometimes it's not very intuitive to understand which one > to use). > > It should be possible, yet I'm unsure how to make the desktop manager > part of pcmanfm put the focus on the first icon on the desktop. Once one > item has the focus, you can browse through the desktop icons with the > cursor keys. > surely pcmanfm > could need some accessibility enhancements concerning hotkeys and their > documentation. > > in regards to accessing the panel, > The only way I found so far is the "lxpanelctl" command which is to be > called by the window manager. Alt-F1 pops up the menu in Knoppix. > > The hotkey modifications for compiz-fusion and metacity concerning the > lxpanel menu is present in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45knoppix. Here is an > excerpt: > > -- > > case "$STARTUP" in >  *lxde|lx*) # Need to change Alt_F1 and Alt_F2 hotkeys in order to make LXDE > menu accessible >  sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = Disabled/g' \ >         -e 's/as_run_command0_key *=.*$/as_run_command0_key =         -e 's/as_command0 *=.*$/as_command0 = lxpanelctl menu/g' \ >            "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null >  gconftool --type string \ >            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu disabled > \ >            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog disabled > \ >            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 '            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_2 '            --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 'lxpanelctl > menu' \ >            --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_2 'lxpanelctl > run' >  ;; >  *) # Change Alt-F1 back when not running lxde >  sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key =            "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null >  gconftool --type string \ >            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu ' \ >            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog '  ;; > esac > > -- > > Of course this can also be set manually in gconf-editor (metacity/gnome) or > ccsm (compiz-fusion). > > Klaus Knopper > > > > On 23/05/11 19:58, Phill Whiteside wrote: >> >> Hiyas, >> >> much has happened recently, including lubuntu getting clearance for full >> adoption at 11.10 by Canonical. Whilst I have quietly pushed >> accessibility (well, maybe not so quietly) as a part of lubuntu, we now >> need a bit of help off this team. >> >> Our specification of the minimal hardware it will run on cannot be >> broken, nor can our commitment to pre i686 processors. >> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu >> >>  From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the >> opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it >> would be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we >> are committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and >> has agreed that we should really strive to attain this. >> >> We are short of devs who can dedicate resources to this task, so I ask >> that any of you who can assist do so. I'd really like to see lubuntu >> 11.10 come out with as much accessibility as is possible on " A Pentium >> II or Celeron system with 128 MiB of RAM is probably a bottom-line >> configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with Lubuntu" >> >> So, once you've all had your heart attacks and say it cannot be done... >> the ones who go "hmmm, that is actually possible.." Please make your >> selves known. >> >> Regards, >> >> Phill. >> >> -- >> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw >> >> > > > > > -- > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > Post to     : lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > From linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com Wed May 25 03:40:33 2011 From: linuxx64.bashsh at gmail.com (Alex H.) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 23:40:33 -0400 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <4DDB5D11.5040902@thefudge.net> Message-ID: Hi I like that approach, Plus as I'm totally blind, I don't care about the graphics and that's just resources being used for no reason for some buttons. Alex On 5/24/11, PCMan wrote: > For the panel, Brian Cameron has a good idea. He suggested that we can > use a different UI for orca. > That means, replacing all buttons in the bar with standard GtkButton > widget rather than some hand-made ones. > This looks ugly, but will have much better usability. If > "accessibility mode" is on, we use standard GtkButton with text label > rather than current ones with images on them. > > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:58 AM, Phill Whiteside wrote: >> >> >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> From: Rob Whyte >> Date: Tue, May 24, 2011 at 8:24 AM >> Subject: Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility >> To: Phill Whiteside >> >> >> Hi guys, >> in my own efforts to get orca better with LXDE I conversed with Klaus >> Knopper the author of Knoppix. >> I have put his notes below.. >> I also tried with nto much success to try and figure out why orca did not >> work with thunar though it claims to have great gtk support. >> Please find notes below and hope it is helpful. >> >> export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN="gtk" GTK_MODULES="gail:atk-bridge" >> before starting a GTK program makes it aware of orca as screenreader. >> You need to start orca as well, of course. >> >> The panel containing the menu (lxpanel in our case) will send the >> "highlighted" menu item to orca automatically if the two variables >> mentioned before are set before starting lxpanel. The tricky part is to >> pop up the menu without the mouse. Unfortunately, lxpanel does not have a >> "hotkey" for this on its own, but the command "lxpanelctl menu" will >> notify lxpanel to show the menu. Now you add this command to the window >> managers hotkey list (which is different in compiz-fusion and metacity), >> and you are there. Once the hotkey (Alt-F1 in Knoppix) is pressed, >> lxpanelctl menu will be called, and the menu pops up. >> >> I did not find a way yet to browse through the dock icons in lxpanel, >> though it must be possible somehow, since using the mouse will focus the >> icons and lets orca speak them. Maybe, just the internal link between >> icons and a hotkey for selecting them is missing. >> >> pcmanfm works quite well with orca, though the "desktop background" >> version of it is not very talkative. If you start the windowed version >> of pcmanfm, you can switch between canvases with eithger TAB or the >> cursor keys (sometimes it's not very intuitive to understand which one >> to use). >> >> It should be possible, yet I'm unsure how to make the desktop manager >> part of pcmanfm put the focus on the first icon on the desktop. Once one >> item has the focus, you can browse through the desktop icons with the >> cursor keys. >> surely pcmanfm >> could need some accessibility enhancements concerning hotkeys and their >> documentation. >> >> in regards to accessing the panel, >> The only way I found so far is the "lxpanelctl" command which is to be >> called by the window manager. Alt-F1 pops up the menu in Knoppix. >> >> The hotkey modifications for compiz-fusion and metacity concerning the >> lxpanel menu is present in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45knoppix. Here is an >> excerpt: >> >> -- >> >> case "$STARTUP" in >>  *lxde|lx*) # Need to change Alt_F1 and Alt_F2 hotkeys in order to make >> LXDE >> menu accessible >>  sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = Disabled/g' \ >>         -e 's/as_run_command0_key *=.*$/as_run_command0_key = >         -e 's/as_command0 *=.*$/as_command0 = lxpanelctl menu/g' \ >>            "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null >>  gconftool --type string \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu >> disabled >> \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog >> disabled >> \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 '> \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_2 '> \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 'lxpanelctl >> menu' \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_2 'lxpanelctl >> run' >>  ;; >>  *) # Change Alt-F1 back when not running lxde >>  sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = >            "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null >>  gconftool --type string \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu >> '> \ >>            --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog >> '>  ;; >> esac >> >> -- >> >> Of course this can also be set manually in gconf-editor (metacity/gnome) >> or >> ccsm (compiz-fusion). >> >> Klaus Knopper >> >> >> >> On 23/05/11 19:58, Phill Whiteside wrote: >>> >>> Hiyas, >>> >>> much has happened recently, including lubuntu getting clearance for full >>> adoption at 11.10 by Canonical. Whilst I have quietly pushed >>> accessibility (well, maybe not so quietly) as a part of lubuntu, we now >>> need a bit of help off this team. >>> >>> Our specification of the minimal hardware it will run on cannot be >>> broken, nor can our commitment to pre i686 processors. >>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu >>> >>>  From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of the >>> opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that it >>> would be possible to include within the very tight constraints that we >>> are committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility and >>> has agreed that we should really strive to attain this. >>> >>> We are short of devs who can dedicate resources to this task, so I ask >>> that any of you who can assist do so. I'd really like to see lubuntu >>> 11.10 come out with as much accessibility as is possible on " A Pentium >>> II or Celeron system with 128 MiB of RAM is probably a bottom-line >>> configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with Lubuntu" >>> >>> So, once you've all had your heart attacks and say it cannot be done... >>> the ones who go "hmmm, that is actually possible.." Please make your >>> selves known. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Phill. >>> >>> -- >>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw >>> >>> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop >> Post to     : lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net >> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop >> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >> >> > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility > From themuso at ubuntu.com Wed May 25 04:20:26 2011 From: themuso at ubuntu.com (Luke Yelavich) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 14:20:26 +1000 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <4DDB5D11.5040902@thefudge.net> Message-ID: <20110525042026.GA2798@strigy.yelavich.home> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 11:44:10AM EST, PCMan wrote: > For the panel, Brian Cameron has a good idea. He suggested that we can > use a different UI for orca. > That means, replacing all buttons in the bar with standard GtkButton > widget rather than some hand-made ones. > This looks ugly, but will have much better usability. If > "accessibility mode" is on, we use standard GtkButton with text label > rather than current ones with images on them. An alternative is to make the existing buttons accessible, by adding calls to atk to properly identify and label the buttons. This reduces the amount of divergence and makes it easier for you to maintain, as you don't have to maintain a set of buttons using 2 different ways of rendering etc. Luke From bernhard.stadelmayer at googlemail.com Wed May 25 15:29:44 2011 From: bernhard.stadelmayer at googlemail.com (bernhard.stadelmayer) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 17:29:44 +0200 Subject: Accessibility of Ubuntu 11.04 Message-ID: <4DDD2068.4020208@googlemail.com> Hi all, As you probably know, Ubuntu 11.04 has been released with a new Desktop called Unity. I tested the major versions of Ubuntu if they are working probably on my system and what features are supported by Orca. But now, I'm not sure if there's something like Orca in this new Desktop. Could someone tell me if there's a Screenreader in Unity? If so, are there also translations of the user interface in other languages like German? Thanks for your help, Bernhard From vilmar at informal.com.br Wed May 25 15:39:56 2011 From: vilmar at informal.com.br (=?UTF-8?B?Sm9zw6kgVmlsbWFyIEVzdMOhY2lvIGRlIFNvdXph?=) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 12:39:56 -0300 Subject: Accessibility of Ubuntu 11.04 In-Reply-To: <4DDD2068.4020208@googlemail.com> References: <4DDD2068.4020208@googlemail.com> Message-ID: <4DDD22CC.4070802@informal.com.br> Hi, Orca works with Unity as well, although there are some problems with accessibility that are already being addressed. Thanks. On 05/25/2011 12:29 PM, bernhard.stadelmayer wrote: > Hi all, > > As you probably know, Ubuntu 11.04 has been released with a new Desktop > called Unity. I tested the major versions of Ubuntu if they are working > probably on my system and what features are supported by Orca. But now, > I'm not sure if there's something like Orca in this new Desktop. Could > someone tell me if there's a Screenreader in Unity? If so, are there > also translations of the user interface in other languages like German? > > Thanks for your help, > > Bernhard > From cjk at teamcharliesangels.com Wed May 25 15:45:10 2011 From: cjk at teamcharliesangels.com (Charlie Kravetz) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 09:45:10 -0600 Subject: Accessibility of Ubuntu 11.04 In-Reply-To: <4DDD22CC.4070802@informal.com.br> References: <4DDD2068.4020208@googlemail.com> <4DDD22CC.4070802@informal.com.br> Message-ID: <20110525094510.35eb4191@teamcharliesangels.com> On Wed, 25 May 2011 12:39:56 -0300 José Vilmar Estácio de Souza wrote: > Hi, Orca works with Unity as well, although there are some problems with > accessibility that are already being addressed. > Thanks. > > On 05/25/2011 12:29 PM, bernhard.stadelmayer wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > As you probably know, Ubuntu 11.04 has been released with a new Desktop > > called Unity. I tested the major versions of Ubuntu if they are working > > probably on my system and what features are supported by Orca. But now, > > I'm not sure if there's something like Orca in this new Desktop. Could > > someone tell me if there's a Screenreader in Unity? If so, are there > > also translations of the user interface in other languages like German? > > > > Thanks for your help, > > > > Bernhard > > > We intentionally made the default installation with the screen-reader (Orca) classic-session for Ubuntu 11.04. Since there are still several issues that need to be fixed in Unity, this was an intentional decision to insure that visually impaired users would have a working desktop. Unity is mostly about looks, and looks do not function well with a screen-reader. If you do install orca and run it in unity, please be aware you will have issues with it. -- Charlie Kravetz Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] From alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com Wed May 25 15:46:08 2011 From: alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com (Alan Bell) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 16:46:08 +0100 Subject: Accessibility of Ubuntu 11.04 In-Reply-To: <4DDD2068.4020208@googlemail.com> References: <4DDD2068.4020208@googlemail.com> Message-ID: <4DDD2440.3070505@theopenlearningcentre.com> On 25/05/11 16:29, bernhard.stadelmayer wrote: > Hi all, > > As you probably know, Ubuntu 11.04 has been released with a new > Desktop called Unity. I tested the major versions of Ubuntu if they > are working probably on my system and what features are supported by > Orca. But now, I'm not sure if there's something like Orca in this new > Desktop. Could someone tell me if there's a Screenreader in Unity? If > so, are there also translations of the user interface in other > languages like German? > > Thanks for your help, > > Bernhard > by default if you install Ubuntu with the screen reader profile it will take you to the classic gnome interface, not the new Unity layout. Orca is present in both and there are translations of the desktop into German, however I wouldn't be surprised if some of the bits Orca reads are not translated. Some bits of Unity don't work well with Orca yet. Alan. From ka1cey at gmail.com Wed May 25 15:52:02 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 11:52:02 -0400 Subject: Show-Stopper: Metacity 'save' and 'open' dialogues in Ubuntu 11.04 broken when Orca running! Message-ID: <4DDD25A2.5040901@gmail.com> Whenever I try using these dialogues, for instance, the 'save as' in gedit, I end up with an apparently frozen system. I can get to the 'run' dialogue or 'places' search box in Unity, and type commands, such as 'orca --replace'. Sometimes, I can open a terminal with 'ctrl+alt+t'. I cannot switch among open apps, either by super-key shortcuts or 'alt+tab'. In some cases, there is the error sound and the 'not responding' message regarding the metacity dialogue. This happens whether I'm using Unity or Classic Gnome, and whether using the stock Orca 3.0.0 or the daily build. I cannot be sure whether since the install was fresh; I did updates since installing, and before trying a metacity dialogue. Best Regards, Dave Hunt From gilir at ubuntu.com Wed May 25 20:23:24 2011 From: gilir at ubuntu.com (Julien Lavergne) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 22:23:24 +0200 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1306355004.2457.32.camel@saviour> Hi all, Thanks Phill :) Le Tuesday 24 May 2011 à 00:58 +0100, Phill Whiteside a écrit : > > From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of > the opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that > it would be possible to include within the very tight constraints that > we are committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility > and has agreed that we should really strive to attain this. To be complete, we are searching for some sort of document which explain how to make an OS accessible :) During the UDS session [1], someone mention that this document is planned. To begin to work on accessibility on Lubuntu, this type of document will be very very useful :) Regards, Julien Lavergne [1]: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-o-accessibility-team From gilir at ubuntu.com Wed May 25 20:23:56 2011 From: gilir at ubuntu.com (Julien Lavergne) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 22:23:56 +0200 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: References: <4DDB5D11.5040902@thefudge.net> Message-ID: <1306355036.2457.33.camel@saviour> Thanks. I'll keep a copy of this notes, It will be useful when the work on accessibility will start :) Regards, Julien Lavergne Le Tuesday 24 May 2011 à 23:58 +0100, Phill Whiteside a écrit : > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Rob Whyte > Date: Tue, May 24, 2011 at 8:24 AM > Subject: Re: Lubuntu and Accessibility > To: Phill Whiteside > > > Hi guys, > in my own efforts to get orca better with LXDE I conversed with Klaus > Knopper the author of Knoppix. > I have put his notes below.. > I also tried with nto much success to try and figure out why orca did > not work with thunar though it claims to have great gtk support. > Please find notes below and hope it is helpful. > > export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN="gtk" GTK_MODULES="gail:atk-bridge" > before starting a GTK program makes it aware of orca as screenreader. > You need to start orca as well, of course. > > The panel containing the menu (lxpanel in our case) will send the > "highlighted" menu item to orca automatically if the two variables > mentioned before are set before starting lxpanel. The tricky part is > to > pop up the menu without the mouse. Unfortunately, lxpanel does not > have a > "hotkey" for this on its own, but the command "lxpanelctl menu" will > notify lxpanel to show the menu. Now you add this command to the > window > managers hotkey list (which is different in compiz-fusion and > metacity), > and you are there. Once the hotkey (Alt-F1 in Knoppix) is pressed, > lxpanelctl menu will be called, and the menu pops up. > > I did not find a way yet to browse through the dock icons in lxpanel, > though it must be possible somehow, since using the mouse will focus > the > icons and lets orca speak them. Maybe, just the internal link between > icons and a hotkey for selecting them is missing. > > pcmanfm works quite well with orca, though the "desktop background" > version of it is not very talkative. If you start the windowed version > of pcmanfm, you can switch between canvases with eithger TAB or the > cursor keys (sometimes it's not very intuitive to understand which one > to use). > > It should be possible, yet I'm unsure how to make the desktop manager > part of pcmanfm put the focus on the first icon on the desktop. Once > one > item has the focus, you can browse through the desktop icons with the > cursor keys. > surely pcmanfm > could need some accessibility enhancements concerning hotkeys and > their > documentation. > > in regards to accessing the panel, > The only way I found so far is the "lxpanelctl" command which is to be > called by the window manager. Alt-F1 pops up the menu in Knoppix. > > The hotkey modifications for compiz-fusion and metacity concerning the > lxpanel menu is present in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45knoppix. Here is an > excerpt: > > -- > > case "$STARTUP" in > *lxde|lx*) # Need to change Alt_F1 and Alt_F2 hotkeys in order to > make LXDE menu accessible > sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = Disabled/g' \ > -e 's/as_run_command0_key *=.*$/as_run_command0_key = > -e 's/as_command0 *=.*$/as_command0 = lxpanelctl menu/g' \ > "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null > gconftool --type string \ > --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu > disabled \ > --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog > disabled \ > --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 > ' --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_2 > ' --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 > 'lxpanelctl menu' \ > --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_2 > 'lxpanelctl run' > ;; > *) # Change Alt-F1 back when not running lxde > sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null > gconftool --type string \ > --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu > ' --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog > ' ;; > esac > > -- > > Of course this can also be set manually in gconf-editor > (metacity/gnome) or ccsm (compiz-fusion). > > Klaus Knopper > > > > > > On 23/05/11 19:58, Phill Whiteside wrote: > Hiyas, > > much has happened recently, including lubuntu getting > clearance for full > adoption at 11.10 by Canonical. Whilst I have quietly pushed > accessibility (well, maybe not so quietly) as a part of > lubuntu, we now > need a bit of help off this team. > > Our specification of the minimal hardware it will run on > cannot be > broken, nor can our commitment to pre i686 processors. > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu > > From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he > is of the > opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, > that it > would be possible to include within the very tight constraints > that we > are committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of > accessibility and > has agreed that we should really strive to attain this. > > We are short of devs who can dedicate resources to this task, > so I ask > that any of you who can assist do so. I'd really like to see > lubuntu > 11.10 come out with as much accessibility as is possible on " > A Pentium > II or Celeron system with 128 MiB of RAM is probably a > bottom-line > configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with > Lubuntu" > > So, once you've all had your heart attacks and say it cannot > be done... > the ones who go "hmmm, that is actually possible.." Please > make your > selves known. > > Regards, > > Phill. > > -- > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw > > > > > > > -- > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > Post to : lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp From themuso at ubuntu.com Wed May 25 22:55:13 2011 From: themuso at ubuntu.com (Luke Yelavich) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 08:55:13 +1000 Subject: Show-Stopper: Metacity 'save' and 'open' dialogues in Ubuntu 11.04 broken when Orca running! In-Reply-To: <4DDD25A2.5040901@gmail.com> References: <4DDD25A2.5040901@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20110525225513.GB2928@strigy.yelavich.home> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 01:52:02AM EST, Dave Hunt wrote: > Whenever I try using these dialogues, for instance, the 'save as' in > gedit, I end up with an apparently frozen system. I can get to the > 'run' dialogue or 'places' search box in Unity, and type commands, > such as 'orca --replace'. Sometimes, I can open a terminal with > 'ctrl+alt+t'. I cannot switch among open apps, either by super-key > shortcuts or 'alt+tab'. In some cases, there is the error sound and > the 'not responding' message regarding the metacity dialogue. This > happens whether I'm using Unity or Classic Gnome, and whether using > the stock Orca 3.0.0 or the daily build. I cannot be sure whether > since the install was fresh; I did updates since installing, and > before trying a metacity dialogue. Could you possibly outline a procedure to reproduce this, as I'd like to try and produce this myself, and see about what needs fixing. Luke From phillw at ubuntu.com Thu May 26 00:31:19 2011 From: phillw at ubuntu.com (Phill Whiteside) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 01:31:19 +0100 Subject: Fwd: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Which talk engine etc? In-Reply-To: <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: hiyas, JM is a guy who does not pull punches, please do not take his using one word where people would use paragraphs to avoid hurting people's sensibilities wrongly. The lubuntu dev team IS really small. If accessibility would rather wait for 12.04 when you will all have things a little more settled, then that is fine by us. We can build in the accessibility hooks during the alpha stages right up to feature freeze for 12.04. The feature freeze is imminent for 11.10. Getting exceptions for such a major alteration may not be too good a thing to push for 11.10 in lubuntu. 11.10 is our 1st 'official' release and just the slight variances in iso building are taking time up. Please do not see any of this as lubuntu stepping back from our commitment to give, at least basic, accessibility whilst keeping in the extremely tight rules of RAM / CPU etc. Regards, Phill. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jonathan Marsden Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 5:08 PM Subject: Re: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Which talk engine etc? To: lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net On 05/25/2011 05:32 AM, Phill Whiteside wrote: > your thoughts on espeak for lubuntu? Given lack of spec for what we want to do, if someone is working on speech output for Lubuntu, using espeak at least as a quick fix seems reasonable. BUT this question in itself is "cart before the horse" symdrome! First, get a spec for what "accessibility" we want to see (and have resources to implement) in Lubuntu 11.10 Oneiric. *Then* discussion on what software to use, what integration work needs doing, etc. can start. If the Ubuntu Accessibility team doesn't have a basic prioritized list of "things to implement so your OS is considered accessible", then, IMO, we should shelve accessibility features in Lubuntu for this cycle, and start up a blueprint for accessibility in Lubuntu Prolific Panda (or whatever it will be named!). It's not as though we have a surplus of devs standing idle with no work for them to do in Oneiric :) Jonathan _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop Post to : lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp -- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kyle4jesus at gmail.com Thu May 26 01:24:49 2011 From: kyle4jesus at gmail.com (Kyle) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 21:24:49 -0400 Subject: Show-Stopper: Metacity 'save' and 'open' dialogues in Ubuntu 11.04 broken when Orca running! In-Reply-To: <20110525225513.GB2928@strigy.yelavich.home> References: <4DDD25A2.5040901@gmail.com> <20110525225513.GB2928@strigy.yelavich.home> Message-ID: <4DDDABE1.3090606@gmail.com> From my experience, the system hangs if your home directory or the directory where you last opened or saved a file contains a large number of files. This appears to be a GNOME problem that has existed for a rather long time, and doesn't appear to be limited to Ubuntu. I have noticed, however, that in GNOME3, I seem to have to kill Python the first time I open or save a file using the Metacity file chooser in order to get Orca talking again, which does seem to be a new problem. Nautilus also hangs on my home directory, but usually for only about 5 seconds. ~Kyle From cjk at teamcharliesangels.com Thu May 26 03:14:29 2011 From: cjk at teamcharliesangels.com (Charlie Kravetz) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 21:14:29 -0600 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Lubuntu and Accessibility In-Reply-To: <1306355004.2457.32.camel@saviour> References: <1306355004.2457.32.camel@saviour> Message-ID: <20110525211429.716ce849@teamcharliesangels.com> On Wed, 25 May 2011 22:23:24 +0200 Julien Lavergne wrote: > Hi all, > > Thanks Phill :) > > Le Tuesday 24 May 2011 à 00:58 +0100, Phill Whiteside a écrit : > > > > From a general chat to our head of development on lubuntu, he is of > > the opinion that if the code is really (and I mean really) tight, that > > it would be possible to include within the very tight constraints that > > we are committed to be able to uphold the inclusion of accessibility > > and has agreed that we should really strive to attain this. > > To be complete, we are searching for some sort of document which explain > how to make an OS accessible :) During the UDS session [1], someone > mention that this document is planned. To begin to work on accessibility > on Lubuntu, this type of document will be very very useful :) > > Regards, > Julien Lavergne > > [1]: > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-o-accessibility-team > > > Here is an excellent guide that can be used by any distribution. I know it is specific to Gnome, but if we could developers to look at it and apply what they can, everything would be much more accessible. http://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/stable/ -- Charlie Kravetz Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] From david at rustytelephone.net Thu May 26 05:23:57 2011 From: david at rustytelephone.net (David Sexton) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 10:53:57 +0530 Subject: killing and restarting orca properly ubuntu 11.04 Message-ID: <4DDDE3ED.4020009@rustytelephone.net> Hi, Finally got everything working, mostly, with 11.04. Orca crashes randomly for no reason, but that's ok if there were a reason to restart it. killall orca or gksu killall orca doesn't work. Maybe there is another layer of accessibility that needs to be killed and restarted to bring orca back? Then I can make a script to completely kill and reload orca and crashes wouldn't be such a problem... David -- David Sexton +91 9400223351 From vilmar at informal.com.br Thu May 26 09:21:40 2011 From: vilmar at informal.com.br (=?utf-8?Q?Jose_Vilmar_Est=C3=A1cio_De_Souza?=) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 06:21:40 -0300 Subject: killing and restarting orca properly ubuntu 11.04 In-Reply-To: <4DDDE3ED.4020009@rustytelephone.net> References: <4DDDE3ED.4020009@rustytelephone.net> Message-ID: <11F30D85-BFE5-4844-8426-17286104531C@informal.com.br> Hi, Try the following command: orca --replace []S José Vilmar Estácio de Souza Em 26/05/2011, às 02:23, David Sexton escreveu: > Hi, > > Finally got everything working, mostly, with 11.04. > Orca crashes randomly for no reason, but that's ok if there were a reason to restart it. > killall orca > or > gksu killall orca > doesn't work. Maybe there is another layer of accessibility that needs to be killed and restarted to bring orca back? > Then I can make a script to completely kill and reload orca and crashes wouldn't be such a problem... > David > > -- > David Sexton > +91 9400223351 > > > -- > Ubuntu-accessibility mailing list > Ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-accessibility From david at rustytelephone.net Thu May 26 15:04:59 2011 From: david at rustytelephone.net (David Sexton) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 20:34:59 +0530 Subject: skype with orca, the easy way Message-ID: <4DDE6C1B.40204@rustytelephone.net> Hi everyone. I wrote this for the participants here at IISE where we are sharing computers so this is to use skype and pidgin on a portable drive, but you could use it from any folder. In fact, this would be an easy way to save and load different skype names or pidgin settings, just extract the files and rename the askype folder like, personal skype, extract the zip again and rename askype folder to business skype and then follow the instructions below Warning! If you have pidgin settings already, running this will delete them, if you want to save your settings and use this, first copy the .purple folder from your home folder to the askype folder Setting up and using skype with pidgin and orca I have attached a zip file which is to be extracted to a USB drive. Download the file extract to your portable media find the askype directory run askype.sh It will ask for your skype name then press enter It will ask for your password then press enter If all goes well, You will hear the skype startup sound Run pidgin from the applications, internet menu Press the add account button tab to the account type box and press space select skype from the list and press space tab to skype name and type your skype name press the add button you should have a list of your contacts now run the close and save skype.sh file to save the pidgin settings to your portable drive Anytime you want to use skype after the setup do this: run askype.sh wait for the skype sound run pidgin when you are finished with the computer, run close and save The close and save file removes all your personal information from the computer so feel free to setup other pidgin accounts for msn, facebook, etc How it works. First, stops pidgin and skype if they are running then deletes any pidgin and skype settings from the home directory then copies your pidgin settings from the askype folder then asks you for your username and password for skype then copies basic skype settings to your home directory finally, logs you into skype Feel free to make improvements. I would be interested to know if this works for you and is useful David -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: askype.zip Type: application/octet-stream Size: 12233 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pmikeal at comcast.net Thu May 26 22:22:52 2011 From: pmikeal at comcast.net (Pia) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 18:22:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Fwd: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Which talk engine etc? In-Reply-To: References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: What John is asking for seems so obvious to us who are disabled that I forget normal people don't "get it". That kind of request is like demanding that there be a specification first that monitors and video cards have to be supported or that we need mouse support. The road map document would be simple. We need: Something that reads the screen verbally to blind or dyslexic people. Something that allows for braille output for the blind. Some kind of magnification system for the visually impaired. Closed captioning tools and visual cues for the deaf. special keyboard layouts and settings for the mobility impaired that will allow them to use toggle keys since they may not be able to hold down more than one key at once Something to modify mouse behavior for the mobility impaired. A dictation package that responds to voice commands as the interface for the mobility impaired. meaningful icons for the dyslexic but alt tags or meaningful text on the icons for the visually impaired. See, list done. Most of this can be done just with settings in the existing desktop, others require programs. Mentioning espeak was important because the solutions also have to be lean and so it doesn't make sense to evaluate heavier resource intensive apps. Any other ideas? Thanks, Pia On Thu, 26 May 2011, Phill Whiteside wrote: > hiyas, > > JM is a guy who does not pull punches, please do not take his using one word > where people would use paragraphs to avoid hurting people's sensibilities > wrongly. The lubuntu dev team IS really small. If accessibility would rather > wait for 12.04 when you will all have things a little more settled, then > that is fine by us. We can build in the accessibility hooks during the alpha > stages right up to feature freeze for 12.04. The feature freeze is imminent > for 11.10. Getting exceptions for such a major alteration may not be too > good a thing to push for 11.10 in lubuntu. 11.10 is our 1st 'official' > release and just the slight variances in iso building are taking time up. > Please do not see any of this as lubuntu stepping back from our commitment > to give, at least basic, accessibility whilst keeping in the extremely tight > rules of RAM / CPU etc. > > Regards, > > Phill. > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Jonathan Marsden > Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 5:08 PM > Subject: Re: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Which talk engine etc? > To: lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net > > > On 05/25/2011 05:32 AM, Phill Whiteside wrote: > > > your thoughts on espeak for lubuntu? > > Given lack of spec for what we want to do, if someone is working on > speech output for Lubuntu, using espeak at least as a quick fix seems > reasonable. > > BUT this question in itself is "cart before the horse" symdrome! > > First, get a spec for what "accessibility" we want to see (and have > resources to implement) in Lubuntu 11.10 Oneiric.  *Then* discussion on > what software to use, what integration work needs doing, etc. can start. > > If the Ubuntu Accessibility team doesn't have a basic prioritized list > of "things to implement so your OS is considered accessible", then, IMO, > we should shelve accessibility features in Lubuntu for this cycle, and > start up a blueprint for accessibility in Lubuntu Prolific Panda (or > whatever it will be named!). > > It's not as though we have a surplus of devs standing idle with no work > for them to do in Oneiric :) > > Jonathan > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > Post to     : lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > > > -- > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw > > From alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com Thu May 26 22:29:11 2011 From: alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com (Alan Bell) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 23:29:11 +0100 Subject: Fwd: [Lubuntu-desktop] Fwd: Which talk engine etc? In-Reply-To: References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: <4DDED437.3020206@theopenlearningcentre.com> I would suggest testing it against the personas we have designed. Does it work for Daniela, could Faisal use it etc? https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Personas Can you install it with the monitor turned off? Can you start an on screen keyboard without a keyboard plugged in? Alan. From david at rustytelephone.net Fri May 27 02:42:44 2011 From: david at rustytelephone.net (David Sexton) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 08:12:44 +0530 Subject: Help I broke speakup and orca in ubuntu 11.04 In-Reply-To: <001201cc1bbe$656a1910$0200a8c0@farfar> References: <001201cc1bbe$656a1910$0200a8c0@farfar> Message-ID: <4DDF0FA4.4070902@rustytelephone.net> Help! Happily speakup comes in the ubuntu 11.04 kernel... Here's what I did that broke the entire sound system installed espeakup loaded speakup_soft with modprobe after that no gnome startup sound at all, no orca I thought maybe I should use speech dispatcher so I installed speechd-up, but that said no modules found so I ran spd-conf and that fixed that speakup worked with speechd-up and gnome sound was back after uninstalling espeakup but now orca doesn't work, it says letters if I type that are cut off even after not running speechd-up anymore orca won't come back to normal so I guess spd-conf modified something orca needed. How can I get these two to play nicely together? Failing that, how to get orca back to normal. David David Sexton +91 9400223351 From alex.midence at gmail.com Fri May 27 04:24:05 2011 From: alex.midence at gmail.com (Alex Midence) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 23:24:05 -0500 Subject: Ubuntu-accessibility Digest, Vol 66, Issue 26 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi, david, You wrote on: Fri, 27 May 2011 08:12:44 +0530 > From: David Sexton > To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." > , ubuntu-accessibility at lists.ubuntu.com > Subject: Help I broke speakup and orca in ubuntu 11.04 > but now orca doesn't work, it says letters if I type that are cut off > even after not running speechd-up anymore orca won't come back to normal > so I guess spd-conf modified something orca needed. > How can I get these two to play nicely together? > Failing that, how to get orca back to normal. > David > > David Sexton > +91 9400223351 You might try reinstalling orca.: sudo apt-get purge gnome-orca; sudo apt-get install gnome-orca Good luck, Alex M From david at rustytelephone.net Fri May 27 04:27:05 2011 From: david at rustytelephone.net (David Sexton) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 09:57:05 +0530 Subject: Help I broke speakup and orca in ubuntu 11.04 In-Reply-To: <4DDF0FA4.4070902@rustytelephone.net> References: <001201cc1bbe$656a1910$0200a8c0@farfar> <4DDF0FA4.4070902@rustytelephone.net> Message-ID: <4DDF2819.9060706@rustytelephone.net> I got orca back to normal by copying a working /etc/speech-dispatcher folder to the computer, but still no working speakup David David Sexton +91 9400223351 On 5/27/2011 8:12 AM, David Sexton wrote: > Help! > Happily speakup comes in the ubuntu 11.04 kernel... > Here's what I did that broke the entire sound system > installed espeakup > loaded speakup_soft with modprobe > after that no gnome startup sound at all, no orca > I thought maybe I should use speech dispatcher so I installed > speechd-up, but that said no modules found so I ran spd-conf and that > fixed that > speakup worked with speechd-up and gnome sound was back after > uninstalling espeakup > but now orca doesn't work, it says letters if I type that are cut off > even after not running speechd-up anymore orca won't come back to > normal so I guess spd-conf modified something orca needed. > How can I get these two to play nicely together? > Failing that, how to get orca back to normal. > David > > David Sexton > +91 9400223351 > > > From pmikeal at comcast.net Fri May 27 13:42:28 2011 From: pmikeal at comcast.net (Pia) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 09:42:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: I will try to make this concise until I have free time this evening to answer the technical questions but just wanted to say first of all that it is not divisive to admit that as a developer one does not yet understand or "get it" the use case they are working with but rather a first step in developing the team approach with the user. Because we are talking about people who on a basic level interact with their environment in a completely different way, this is essential and so no offense meant. So, both working together united as a team and having the humility to admit that one does not "get it" is essential to getting it and being successful and coding for it. Secondly, my frustration is that there are a ton of road maps and system specifications out there for accessibility in Linux and specific distros. The choices of assistive technology to support and software utilizing those technologies to install and configure is really very narrow and thin. It is sparse enough and Ubuntu and others have done enough to get .deb packages that work well in their implementations, that it is frustrating to see someone say that would take a whole development cycle to reinvent the wheel rather than modifying the wheel to meet your needs. I am jaded by having wasted my time working on projects where we were never allowed to move past the specification stage because some people were too intimidated to and the first sign was always a very long time frame for the specification of the system. On Fri, 27 May 2011, Jonathan Marsden wrote: > Pia (and accessibility team), > > On 05/26/2011 03:22 PM, Pia wrote: > >> What John is asking for seems so obvious to us who are disabled that >> I forget normal people don't "get it". > > I really hope the Ubuntu Accessibility team is not composed entirely of > folks who are "disabled" -- some more or less "normal" people may well > have an interest in accessibility issues, too. Is dividing human beings > into "us" and "normal people" really a helpful and appropriate mindset > for an accessibility team? All concerned might benefit more from > working together, than from creating artificial and unhelpful divisions > between people. > > For a little perspective: I am the guy who spoke up at a UDS session > discussing possible software features for Lubuntu this release cycle and > said (via IRC) > > "do we need to consider improving accessibility features of Lubuntu > in Oneiric ?" > > (That is a direct quote, copied from my IRC log of 10 May 2011). > > Had I not done that, as far as I know doing this work would not even be > under discussion for this development cycle, because accessibility would > not be in the blueprint for Lubuntu 11.10 at all. > > I am an advocate for doing some work in this area in Lubuntu; in order > for a very small team to do that effectively and efficiently, we need > clarity on what exactly that work *is* , and how to prioritize it. This > is not optional, it is required, if useful work in this area is to > happen in the next few months within Lubuntu. > > Open source software development in general now has a fairly well > established set of stages, and Debian and Ubuntu software development > has its own perhaps even more specific variant of those. Defining > clearly what it is you are trying to do, that is, writing a > specification, or blueprint, is an early part of that process. > Launchpad supports this with what it calls blueprints, UDS is the usual > venue for refining these specifications, etc. There are probably books > and academic papers written about this process... > > I submit that your stating or implying that I am "normal" and that I > "don't get it" were both rather unfortunate and unhelpful choices to make. > >> That kind of request is like demanding that there be a specification >> first that monitors and video cards have to be supported or that we >> need mouse support. > > (It is tempting to make a comment about non-software-developers not > "getting it", but that might be unkind). > > Allow me to use your own examples: Does Lubuntu 11.10 need to add full > support for Tektronix vector graphics terminals as a primary output > device, or do we need to add drivers for Hercules monochrome graphics > cards this cycle? Do we need to support the Xerox Star mouse? Should > we go to special lengths to add support for one-button mice, since Apple > makes those? Is testing that Lubuntu works well with Microsoft bus mice > appropriate and necessary, since no-one tested that in the last (Natty) > development cycle? > > Saying "we need monitor, mouse and video card support" is a hopelessly > vague specification, in need of much refinement before it can be > implemented by software developers. So is "we need accessibility"! > > If you do not understand the rationale for software specifications being > created and refined before software is designed and coded, it will be > very difficult for you to make a significant contribution to the > software development process of Lubuntu. I would therefore urge you and > the accessibility team to make a little effort in that direction, just > as I am trying to make some effort to learn more about what it will > really take, and what it really means, to "add accessibility" to Lubuntu > in a useful way. > > We can help each other, if we choose to do so. The alternative is to > declare that those who are not like us and do not share our own > background and education "don't get it". Which would you prefer? > >> The road map document would be simple. We need: > > I think this is a potentially useful initial rough draft; please do > publish it on a wiki page, and so allow it to be edited and revised by > the accessibility team as a whole, and to have others outside it > (Lubuntu developers included, if they wish) add comments and questions. > > Here are a few questions from my initial reading of your list: > > 1. Are these items in priority order? If not, can your team please > order them, so we can consider implementing the most important ones > first? > > 2. How many (and which) of them do Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu already > fully support? (This helps us understand how far behind Lubuntu > currently is). > > 3. How many and which of them do Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu plan to > work on implementing this (11.10 Oneiric) development cycle? (This > helps us collaborate and use any such current work, avoiding any > unnecessary duplication of effort). > > 4. "Something that allows for braille output" might be more of a > hardware specification than a software one. I know braille output > devices exist, and back in the days of text mode computer use have > helped set them up. Is there a class of these devices that already > have working driver support in the Linux/Debian/Ubuntu world? How > do Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu support them currently? > >> special keyboard layouts and settings for the mobility impaired that >> will allow them to use toggle keys since they may not be able to hold >> down more than one key at once >> >> Something to modify mouse behavior for the mobility impaired. > > 5. These seems to assume all users with mobility impairment will be > able to use some form of keyboard and mouse -- is that realistic? > I have seen "suck/blow" tube interfaces to a screen in (old) video > about severely mobility impaired (mostly paralyzed) disabled users > using computing technology; such users might find "special keyboard > layouts" and "something to modify mouse behaviour" insufficient. I > have no idea if that is a common issue, or so unusual it can safely > be ignored for Lubuntu. Can it? > >> A dictation package that responds to voice commands as the interface for >> the mobility impaired. > > 6. Are there any such open source dictation tools currently in > existence? Can you provide pointers to information about them? > Is their memory footprint low enough for inclusion in Lubuntu? > We definitely would not have enough developer resources to create > such a product from scratch in 11.10. > >> meaningful icons for the dyslexic but alt tags or meaningful text on the >> icons for the visually impaired. > > 7. I'm not sure I understand this item yet; can you provide examples of > "good" and "bad" practice in this regard in the current Lubuntu > 11.04 default user interface, to help clarify this for us? > >> See, list done. Most of this can be done just with settings in the >> existing desktop, others require programs. > > 8. Really! Can you (or your team) annotate your list with which items > can be done just with settings in the existing (Lubuntu 11.04 LXDE) > desktop, please? And please could you also mention (and provide links > to web sites for) any specific programs you have in mind for all those > list items requiring programs? > >> Mentioning espeak was important because the solutions also have to be >> lean and so it doesn't make sense to evaluate heavier resource >> intensive apps. > > It doesn't make sense to evaluate *any* apps at all without a clear > definition of what you are trying to accomplish by adding those apps to > Lubuntu; hence my request for a clearer specification. > > Thanks for helping us take the first small steps in this direction, > > Jonathan > > [ Throwaway aside of the day: why does a team labeled "accessibility" > choose to use a closed (i.e. inaccessible) mailing list? On the > surface, that appears paradoxical. Any chance you could at least make > the ubuntu-accessibility mailing list archives more readily "accessible" > (public) to the rest of us, so we can learn from reading them? Ideally, > please make your list as open as this one (lubuntu-desktop) is. ] > From alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com Fri May 27 13:55:48 2011 From: alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com (Alan Bell) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 14:55:48 +0100 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> > On Fri, 27 May 2011, Jonathan Marsden wrote: > >> Pia (and accessibility team), >> >> On 05/26/2011 03:22 PM, Pia wrote: >> >>> What John is asking for seems so obvious to us who are disabled that >>> I forget normal people don't "get it". >> >> I really hope the Ubuntu Accessibility team is not composed entirely of >> folks who are "disabled" -- some more or less "normal" people may well >> have an interest in accessibility issues, too. Is dividing human beings >> into "us" and "normal people" really a helpful and appropriate mindset >> for an accessibility team? All concerned might benefit more from >> working together, than from creating artificial and unhelpful divisions >> between people. It is made up of people, all of whom are normal, some of whom have a specific impairment. People are motivated to work on accessibility topics for a variety of reasons. >> >> Jonathan >> >> [ Throwaway aside of the day: why does a team labeled "accessibility" >> choose to use a closed (i.e. inaccessible) mailing list? On the >> surface, that appears paradoxical. Any chance you could at least make >> the ubuntu-accessibility mailing list archives more readily "accessible" >> (public) to the rest of us, so we can learn from reading them? Ideally, >> please make your list as open as this one (lubuntu-desktop) is. ] >> > the archives are open as far as I can see https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-accessibility/ I can't find lubuntu-desktop on lists.ubuntu.com, where is that as I am missing some context. Alan. From pmikeal at comcast.net Fri May 27 16:16:18 2011 From: pmikeal at comcast.net (Pia) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 12:16:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 27 May 2011, Alan Bell wrote: > It is made up of people, all of whom are normal, some of whom have a specific > impairment. People are motivated to work on accessibility topics for a > variety of reasons. My intent is not to start a flame war or argue about ideology. I did not mean normal in the social sense but in the technical sense. If using closed captioning, screen reading software, alternative input devices such as onscreen keyboard and sticky keys or dictation, braille, or other accessibility technology were the norm, they would be included by default and no distro would be released without them. As is, monitor keyboard and mouse are the norm. So, yes, all of us who are disabled do not represent the typical use case for software. Forgive me, political correctness drives me nuts, but I certainly don't want to offend anyone or be insensitive. Sometimes I have to admit, I think a lot of people have a difficult time not painting over reality that needs to be addressed if we are to make an effective solution to this problem. The issue I think is that in open source, we are a largely social community, which is wonderful, but one advantage the corporation has is that they are logistical at least internally rather than political. So, even if they don't come out and say it publicly, they will hire disabled beta testers and even coders if they can to work on this software. In the cases where a user base has such specialized needs (disabled people is not the only situation that fits this, but any specialized user base that is sufficiently small) I find the best approach is an agile programming design approach rather than the more traditional system development models, because the users and coders really have to work closely together for the coders to understand what is actually functional. You won't get the realistic road map you want, I wouldn't think, without understanding the problem better which requires a grass roots effort to try things first. So, John, this explains my rationale. Maybe at a place like Microsoft or Freedom Scientific, they have the resources to employ a more traditional model (I do know that both of those companies hire some individuals who do need the technology at the developer and coder level though so that they are inherently implementing some of the agile programming model even without explicitly doing so. Since they are the use case). From pmikeal at comcast.net Fri May 27 16:26:44 2011 From: pmikeal at comcast.net (Pia) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 12:26:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> Message-ID: Oh sorry, didn't finish that last thought. At Microsoft they have the resources to handle the long documentation phases and come up with a good product, but in open source, if you have a very small group represented, you have to get your hands dirty first in order to sufficiently understand the situation well enough to come up with good system specifications and a reasonable roadmap in a reasonable time frame. So, what we were doing in discussing details and wanting to actually test a few things was just that and what you originally were complaining about. Assessing the situation would allow us to know what we can take from Ubuntu's road map and what has to be adjusted. On Fri, 27 May 2011, Pia wrote: > > > On Fri, 27 May 2011, Alan Bell wrote: > >> It is made up of people, all of whom are normal, some of whom have a >> specific impairment. People are motivated to work on accessibility topics >> for a variety of reasons. > > My intent is not to start a flame war or argue about ideology. I did not > mean normal in the social sense but in the technical sense. If using closed > captioning, screen reading software, alternative input devices such as > onscreen keyboard and sticky keys or dictation, braille, or other > accessibility technology were the norm, they would be included by default and > no distro would be released without them. As is, monitor keyboard and mouse > are the norm. So, yes, all of us who are disabled do not represent the > typical use case for software. Forgive me, political correctness drives me > nuts, but I certainly don't want to offend anyone or be insensitive. > Sometimes I have to admit, I think a lot of people have a difficult time not > painting over reality that needs to be addressed if we are to make an > effective solution to this problem. The issue I think is that in open > source, we are a largely social community, which is wonderful, but one > advantage the corporation has is that they are logistical at least internally > rather than political. So, even if they don't come out and say it publicly, > they will hire disabled beta testers and even coders if they can to work on > this software. In the cases where a user base has such specialized needs > (disabled people is not the only situation that fits this, but any > specialized user base that is sufficiently small) I find the best approach is > an agile programming design approach rather than the more traditional system > development models, because the users and coders really have to work closely > together for the coders to understand what is actually functional. You won't > get the realistic road map you want, I wouldn't think, without understanding > the problem better which requires a grass roots effort to try things first. > So, John, this explains my rationale. Maybe at a place like > Microsoft or Freedom Scientific, they have the resources to employ a more > traditional model (I do know that both of those companies hire some > individuals who do need the technology at the developer and coder level > though so that they are inherently implementing some of the agile programming > model even without explicitly doing so. Since they are the use case). > From ka1cey at gmail.com Sat May 28 21:41:43 2011 From: ka1cey at gmail.com (Dave Hunt) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 17:41:43 -0400 Subject: Missing Labels for fields in 'add station' dialog in Banshee Message-ID: <4DE16C17.60607@gmail.com> Hi, When navigating the 'add station' dialogue in Banshee, with Orca, in 11.04, the names of the fields, 'name', 'genra', 'url', etc, are not spoken. I've had to enter values, guessing where they go, to allow the 'save' button to be enabled and, thus, to add my station to the library. Best Regards, Dave From alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com Sun May 29 19:03:40 2011 From: alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com (Alan Bell) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 20:03:40 +0100 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: <4DE2988C.4040804@theopenlearningcentre.com> On 29/05/11 09:02, Jonathan Marsden wrote: > On 05/27/2011 09:26 AM, Pia wrote: > >> ..., but in open source, if you have a very small group represented, >> you have to get your hands dirty first in order to sufficiently >> understand the situation well enough to come up with good system >> specifications and a reasonable roadmap in a reasonable time frame. >> So, what we were doing in discussing details and wanting to actually >> test a few things was just that and what you originally were >> complaining about. Assessing the situation would allow us to know >> what we can take from Ubuntu's road map and what has to be adjusted. > How about sharing Ubuntu's current official accessibility roadmap with > the Lubuntu developers, as a start? I note that > > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Links > > does not seem to me to include a pointer to it, at least not by any name > recognizably similar to "Ubuntu Accessibility Roadmap", which seems an > unfortunate omission. not a roadmap as such, but I have started drafting a document on the Ubuntu infrastructure for accessibility http://pad.ubuntu.com/AccessibilityInfrastructure This will get transferred to the wiki at some point when it is nearly complete and the most glaring errors have been fixed. I don't know much about Lubuntu, only that it is based on something called LXDE as a window manager and is targeted at really old computers. Looking at lubuntu.net it seems to be based on GTK, so I imagine just installing gnome-orca will pull in speech dispatcher at-spi2 and espeak, install onboard and you have an on-screen keyboard too. Does it use ubiquity for the installer? Alan From jmarsden at fastmail.fm Fri May 27 09:07:13 2011 From: jmarsden at fastmail.fm (Jonathan Marsden) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 02:07:13 -0700 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> Pia (and accessibility team), On 05/26/2011 03:22 PM, Pia wrote: > What John is asking for seems so obvious to us who are disabled that > I forget normal people don't "get it". I really hope the Ubuntu Accessibility team is not composed entirely of folks who are "disabled" -- some more or less "normal" people may well have an interest in accessibility issues, too. Is dividing human beings into "us" and "normal people" really a helpful and appropriate mindset for an accessibility team? All concerned might benefit more from working together, than from creating artificial and unhelpful divisions between people. For a little perspective: I am the guy who spoke up at a UDS session discussing possible software features for Lubuntu this release cycle and said (via IRC) "do we need to consider improving accessibility features of Lubuntu in Oneiric ?" (That is a direct quote, copied from my IRC log of 10 May 2011). Had I not done that, as far as I know doing this work would not even be under discussion for this development cycle, because accessibility would not be in the blueprint for Lubuntu 11.10 at all. I am an advocate for doing some work in this area in Lubuntu; in order for a very small team to do that effectively and efficiently, we need clarity on what exactly that work *is* , and how to prioritize it. This is not optional, it is required, if useful work in this area is to happen in the next few months within Lubuntu. Open source software development in general now has a fairly well established set of stages, and Debian and Ubuntu software development has its own perhaps even more specific variant of those. Defining clearly what it is you are trying to do, that is, writing a specification, or blueprint, is an early part of that process. Launchpad supports this with what it calls blueprints, UDS is the usual venue for refining these specifications, etc. There are probably books and academic papers written about this process... I submit that your stating or implying that I am "normal" and that I "don't get it" were both rather unfortunate and unhelpful choices to make. > That kind of request is like demanding that there be a specification > first that monitors and video cards have to be supported or that we > need mouse support. (It is tempting to make a comment about non-software-developers not "getting it", but that might be unkind). Allow me to use your own examples: Does Lubuntu 11.10 need to add full support for Tektronix vector graphics terminals as a primary output device, or do we need to add drivers for Hercules monochrome graphics cards this cycle? Do we need to support the Xerox Star mouse? Should we go to special lengths to add support for one-button mice, since Apple makes those? Is testing that Lubuntu works well with Microsoft bus mice appropriate and necessary, since no-one tested that in the last (Natty) development cycle? Saying "we need monitor, mouse and video card support" is a hopelessly vague specification, in need of much refinement before it can be implemented by software developers. So is "we need accessibility"! If you do not understand the rationale for software specifications being created and refined before software is designed and coded, it will be very difficult for you to make a significant contribution to the software development process of Lubuntu. I would therefore urge you and the accessibility team to make a little effort in that direction, just as I am trying to make some effort to learn more about what it will really take, and what it really means, to "add accessibility" to Lubuntu in a useful way. We can help each other, if we choose to do so. The alternative is to declare that those who are not like us and do not share our own background and education "don't get it". Which would you prefer? > The road map document would be simple. We need: I think this is a potentially useful initial rough draft; please do publish it on a wiki page, and so allow it to be edited and revised by the accessibility team as a whole, and to have others outside it (Lubuntu developers included, if they wish) add comments and questions. Here are a few questions from my initial reading of your list: 1. Are these items in priority order? If not, can your team please order them, so we can consider implementing the most important ones first? 2. How many (and which) of them do Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu already fully support? (This helps us understand how far behind Lubuntu currently is). 3. How many and which of them do Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu plan to work on implementing this (11.10 Oneiric) development cycle? (This helps us collaborate and use any such current work, avoiding any unnecessary duplication of effort). 4. "Something that allows for braille output" might be more of a hardware specification than a software one. I know braille output devices exist, and back in the days of text mode computer use have helped set them up. Is there a class of these devices that already have working driver support in the Linux/Debian/Ubuntu world? How do Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu support them currently? > special keyboard layouts and settings for the mobility impaired that > will allow them to use toggle keys since they may not be able to hold > down more than one key at once > > Something to modify mouse behavior for the mobility impaired. 5. These seems to assume all users with mobility impairment will be able to use some form of keyboard and mouse -- is that realistic? I have seen "suck/blow" tube interfaces to a screen in (old) video about severely mobility impaired (mostly paralyzed) disabled users using computing technology; such users might find "special keyboard layouts" and "something to modify mouse behaviour" insufficient. I have no idea if that is a common issue, or so unusual it can safely be ignored for Lubuntu. Can it? > A dictation package that responds to voice commands as the interface for > the mobility impaired. 6. Are there any such open source dictation tools currently in existence? Can you provide pointers to information about them? Is their memory footprint low enough for inclusion in Lubuntu? We definitely would not have enough developer resources to create such a product from scratch in 11.10. > meaningful icons for the dyslexic but alt tags or meaningful text on the > icons for the visually impaired. 7. I'm not sure I understand this item yet; can you provide examples of "good" and "bad" practice in this regard in the current Lubuntu 11.04 default user interface, to help clarify this for us? > See, list done. Most of this can be done just with settings in the > existing desktop, others require programs. 8. Really! Can you (or your team) annotate your list with which items can be done just with settings in the existing (Lubuntu 11.04 LXDE) desktop, please? And please could you also mention (and provide links to web sites for) any specific programs you have in mind for all those list items requiring programs? > Mentioning espeak was important because the solutions also have to be > lean and so it doesn't make sense to evaluate heavier resource > intensive apps. It doesn't make sense to evaluate *any* apps at all without a clear definition of what you are trying to accomplish by adding those apps to Lubuntu; hence my request for a clearer specification. Thanks for helping us take the first small steps in this direction, Jonathan [ Throwaway aside of the day: why does a team labeled "accessibility" choose to use a closed (i.e. inaccessible) mailing list? On the surface, that appears paradoxical. Any chance you could at least make the ubuntu-accessibility mailing list archives more readily "accessible" (public) to the rest of us, so we can learn from reading them? Ideally, please make your list as open as this one (lubuntu-desktop) is. ] From jmarsden at fastmail.fm Sun May 29 08:02:26 2011 From: jmarsden at fastmail.fm (Jonathan Marsden) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 01:02:26 -0700 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> Message-ID: <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> On 05/27/2011 09:26 AM, Pia wrote: > ..., but in open source, if you have a very small group represented, > you have to get your hands dirty first in order to sufficiently > understand the situation well enough to come up with good system > specifications and a reasonable roadmap in a reasonable time frame. > So, what we were doing in discussing details and wanting to actually > test a few things was just that and what you originally were > complaining about. Assessing the situation would allow us to know > what we can take from Ubuntu's road map and what has to be adjusted. How about sharing Ubuntu's current official accessibility roadmap with the Lubuntu developers, as a start? I note that https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Links does not seem to me to include a pointer to it, at least not by any name recognizably similar to "Ubuntu Accessibility Roadmap", which seems an unfortunate omission. Point us towards it, please, and tell us how far along each current Ubuntu variant (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Server) is in implementing it, if that is not clear from reading the roadmap itself or related documents to which it links. Then, we can perhaps be a part of the process of "assessing the situation", determining what we can take from Ubuntu's accessibility roadmap in creating the Lubuntu equivalent of it. My suspicion is that LXDE itself could need a fair bit of work to use the GTK accessibility stuff well enough to be useful -- but that's a total guess, in part because I've not seen a Ubuntu-oriented definition of "doing accessibility well enough to be useful" yet. I suspect that if you and Alan and Phill and Charlie and whoever else create a roadmap for Lubuntu accessibility separate from the Lubuntu developers, it may not be well accepted by them when it is finally presented to them. Better, surely, to include them (us) in that process, from the beginning? Reading https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-dev/+members#active will show you that Lubuntu officially currently has exactly two (2) developers! Both of them have asked, independently and in different ways, on the lubuntu-desktop list, for some kind of definition of what exactly we are trying to do to "add accessibility" this cycle. If wanting some clarity means "not getting it", then I'd say you are 100% correct, by that definition I "don't get it" yet! As for specifications and clear definitions etc. being overly formal and so unacceptable to you, blueprints and UDS discussion and refinement thereof are a standard and expected part of every Ubuntu development cycle, for every Ubuntu variant, as I hope you are aware. Lubuntu is not an exception in this regard. Nor is accessibility. I have not suggested anything different happen for work on accessibility than happens for other software development work on Lubuntu. First, decide what work will be done; then, do that work. Trying to locate the Ubuntu Accessibility Roadmap that you seem to suggest already exists somewhere, I just now did a Google search for ubuntu accessibility roadmap and found no clearly definitive document for the Oneiric cycle in the first couple of pages of hits. Can you provide pointers to the documentation I have missed? >From this search, I did find my way to: https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-community/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-improving-accessibility-devel-and-info which suggests that perhaps this kind of info is not in fact yet available, but is perhaps being worked on this cycle, since many parts of that spec say "postponed" -- presumably postponed until Oneiric? If so, my proposal that we wait one cycle (note: not indefinitely, one development cycle!) before commencing Lubuntu accessibility development work fits it rather well, doesn't it -- once the spec linked above is fully completed, Lubuntu will (I would think) then have easier access to the baseline documentation and information needed to make good decisions about what to implement to improve its accessibility in the 12.04 cycle. I also found https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Team/Goals which says these are "potential goals"; so not really a clearly defined roadmap, at this stage, then. Then I found https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs which has links to some specs dating back to Feisty (!), and specs for Natty that may or may not have actually been implemented (it doesn't say), and links to docs that it says "must be updated". No clarity on Oneiric accessibility status or a roadmap there. Last edit was around 7 months ago -- a whole development cycle ago. Maybe "everyone" knows where the current official and widely accepted Ubuntu Accessibility Roadmap really is, but Julien and I currently do not, or we would not be asking for a clear statement of what "adding accessibility" is going to take, for Lubuntu. Please work with us to create such a definition, since it apparently does not yet exist. Or, point us directly to it, if it does already exist. I remain convinced that what I proposed most likely represents a more appropriate and realistic timeframe for accomplishing this work than trying to do it in Oneiric in the absence of any specification. That viewpoint is based on personal experience spanning over a quarter-century of full time programming, system and network administration. If you and your team can demonstrate that useful work on Lubuntu accessibility can in fact be added in Oneiric, great -- show us the specs for that work, and the people who will implement it! After all, this whole thread was triggered by Phill W. asking for developer help, so (at least to the uninitiated!) suggesting or even implying that the accessibility team already has clear outline specs, ready for those developers who respond to Phill's request to begin working from. Your latest response, that in fact the accessibility team still needs time to conduct informal experiments before coming up with an outline Lubuntu accessibility spec, to my mind only serves to further bolster my earlier stated position that the real implementation of this work could and probably should be postponed until the 12.04 development cycle. Doing that gives you/us time to complete those experiments, or "test a few things", and then create useful specifications based on their results, which we can then, potentially, develop from. For everything except installer accessibility, interim experimental packages related to Lubuntu accessibility work can be made available in PPAs during the initial test phase, so folks who *really* need it *now* could have a way to obtain it early. Not entirely incidentally, is there a list of the currently-needed Lubuntu-related accessibility experiments or tests somewhere? I feel as though you are telling me that I should "just know" all kinds of things about accessibility and how it is defined for (L)ubuntu, and you seem to suggest that at least one Ubuntu accessibility roadmap already exists that is plenty good enough already, so I should not be asking for an Lubuntu-oriented roadmap or spec. Reality is that I don't just know those things, so those things need stating, clearly (as in, written down, online, such as on a wiki page) -- and I can't even find the official Ubuntu accessibility roadmap yet! Jonathan From gilir at ubuntu.com Sun May 29 20:57:53 2011 From: gilir at ubuntu.com (Julien Lavergne) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 22:57:53 +0200 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DE2988C.4040804@theopenlearningcentre.com> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> <4DE2988C.4040804@theopenlearningcentre.com> Message-ID: <1306702673.2180.13.camel@saviour> Le Sunday 29 May 2011 à 20:03 +0100, Alan Bell a écrit : > not a roadmap as such, but I have started drafting a document on the > Ubuntu infrastructure for accessibility > http://pad.ubuntu.com/AccessibilityInfrastructure > This will get transferred to the wiki at some point when it is nearly > complete and the most glaring errors have been fixed. Thanks Alan for the help :) > I don't know much about Lubuntu, only that it is based on something > called LXDE as a window manager and is targeted at really old > computers. Let's say that LXDE is a GTK/GLib environnement, with very limited GNOME depends :) > Looking at lubuntu.net it seems to be based on GTK, so I imagine just > installing gnome-orca will pull in speech dispatcher at-spi2 and > espeak, > install onboard and you have an on-screen keyboard too. Thanks, it's a good start :) They doesn't seems to pull to much GNOME depends, so we could consider it. However, I'm more concerned about the changes needed on our programs, to make them accessible. > Does it use > ubiquity for the installer? Yes. Regards, Julien Lavergne From jmarsden at fastmail.fm Fri May 27 16:01:55 2011 From: jmarsden at fastmail.fm (Jonathan Marsden) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 09:01:55 -0700 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> Message-ID: <4DDFCAF3.8080101@fastmail.fm> Alan, Pia wrote: >>>> What John is asking for seems so obvious to us who are disabled >>>> that I forget normal people don't "get it". On 05/27/2011 06:55 AM, Alan Bell wrote: > It is made up of people, all of whom are normal, some of whom have a > specific impairment. People are motivated to work on accessibility > topics for a variety of reasons. Thanks! That's what I was hoping for. It's just not at all what the message from Pia suggests as a model. > the archives are open as far as I can see > https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-accessibility/ This seems to work for me now. > I can't find lubuntu-desktop on lists.ubuntu.com, where is that as I > am missing some context. We each can't find the 'other' list, how weird! I did try to look for the ubuntu-accessibility archive yesterday, and all I saw was 404 messages; maybe I mistyped its name or URL somehow? http://lists.launchpad.net/lubuntu-desktop is the archive for lubuntu-desktop. Jonathan From cjk at teamcharliesangels.com Sun May 29 22:58:57 2011 From: cjk at teamcharliesangels.com (Charlie Kravetz) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 16:58:57 -0600 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: <20110529165857.07b7e30c@teamcharliesangels.com> On Sun, 29 May 2011 01:02:26 -0700 Jonathan Marsden wrote: > On 05/27/2011 09:26 AM, Pia wrote: > > > ..., but in open source, if you have a very small group represented, > > you have to get your hands dirty first in order to sufficiently > > understand the situation well enough to come up with good system > > specifications and a reasonable roadmap in a reasonable time frame. > > So, what we were doing in discussing details and wanting to actually > > test a few things was just that and what you originally were > > complaining about. Assessing the situation would allow us to know > > what we can take from Ubuntu's road map and what has to be adjusted. > > How about sharing Ubuntu's current official accessibility roadmap with > the Lubuntu developers, as a start? I note that > > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Links > > does not seem to me to include a pointer to it, at least not by any name > recognizably similar to "Ubuntu Accessibility Roadmap", which seems an > unfortunate omission. > > Point us towards it, please, and tell us how far along each current > Ubuntu variant (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Server) is in implementing > it, if that is not clear from reading the roadmap itself or related > documents to which it links. > > Then, we can perhaps be a part of the process of "assessing the > situation", determining what we can take from Ubuntu's accessibility > roadmap in creating the Lubuntu equivalent of it. My suspicion is that > LXDE itself could need a fair bit of work to use the GTK accessibility > stuff well enough to be useful -- but that's a total guess, in part > because I've not seen a Ubuntu-oriented definition of "doing > accessibility well enough to be useful" yet. > > I suspect that if you and Alan and Phill and Charlie and whoever else > create a roadmap for Lubuntu accessibility separate from the Lubuntu > developers, it may not be well accepted by them when it is finally > presented to them. Better, surely, to include them (us) in that > process, from the beginning? > > Reading > > https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-dev/+members#active > > will show you that Lubuntu officially currently has exactly two (2) > developers! > > Both of them have asked, independently and in different ways, on the > lubuntu-desktop list, for some kind of definition of what exactly we are > trying to do to "add accessibility" this cycle. > > If wanting some clarity means "not getting it", then I'd say you are > 100% correct, by that definition I "don't get it" yet! > > As for specifications and clear definitions etc. being overly formal and > so unacceptable to you, blueprints and UDS discussion and refinement > thereof are a standard and expected part of every Ubuntu development > cycle, for every Ubuntu variant, as I hope you are aware. Lubuntu is > not an exception in this regard. Nor is accessibility. I have not > suggested anything different happen for work on accessibility than > happens for other software development work on Lubuntu. First, decide > what work will be done; then, do that work. > > Trying to locate the Ubuntu Accessibility Roadmap that you seem to > suggest already exists somewhere, I just now did a Google search for > > ubuntu accessibility roadmap > > and found no clearly definitive document for the Oneiric cycle in the > first couple of pages of hits. Can you provide pointers to the > documentation I have missed? > > From this search, I did find my way to: > > > https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-community/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-improving-accessibility-devel-and-info > > which suggests that perhaps this kind of info is not in fact yet > available, but is perhaps being worked on this cycle, since many parts > of that spec say "postponed" -- presumably postponed until Oneiric? > > If so, my proposal that we wait one cycle (note: not indefinitely, one > development cycle!) before commencing Lubuntu accessibility development > work fits it rather well, doesn't it -- once the spec linked above is > fully completed, Lubuntu will (I would think) then have easier access to > the baseline documentation and information needed to make good decisions > about what to implement to improve its accessibility in the 12.04 cycle. > > I also found > > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Team/Goals > > which says these are "potential goals"; so not really a clearly defined > roadmap, at this stage, then. > > Then I found > > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Accessibility/Specs > > which has links to some specs dating back to Feisty (!), and specs for > Natty that may or may not have actually been implemented (it doesn't > say), and links to docs that it says "must be updated". No clarity on > Oneiric accessibility status or a roadmap there. Last edit was around 7 > months ago -- a whole development cycle ago. > > Maybe "everyone" knows where the current official and widely accepted > Ubuntu Accessibility Roadmap really is, but Julien and I currently do > not, or we would not be asking for a clear statement of what "adding > accessibility" is going to take, for Lubuntu. Please work with us to > create such a definition, since it apparently does not yet exist. Or, > point us directly to it, if it does already exist. > > I remain convinced that what I proposed most likely represents a more > appropriate and realistic timeframe for accomplishing this work than > trying to do it in Oneiric in the absence of any specification. That > viewpoint is based on personal experience spanning over a > quarter-century of full time programming, system and network administration. > > If you and your team can demonstrate that useful work on Lubuntu > accessibility can in fact be added in Oneiric, great -- show us the > specs for that work, and the people who will implement it! After all, > this whole thread was triggered by Phill W. asking for developer help, > so (at least to the uninitiated!) suggesting or even implying that the > accessibility team already has clear outline specs, ready for those > developers who respond to Phill's request to begin working from. > > Your latest response, that in fact the accessibility team still needs > time to conduct informal experiments before coming up with an outline > Lubuntu accessibility spec, to my mind only serves to further bolster my > earlier stated position that the real implementation of this work could > and probably should be postponed until the 12.04 development cycle. > Doing that gives you/us time to complete those experiments, or "test a > few things", and then create useful specifications based on their > results, which we can then, potentially, develop from. > > For everything except installer accessibility, interim experimental > packages related to Lubuntu accessibility work can be made available in > PPAs during the initial test phase, so folks who *really* need it *now* > could have a way to obtain it early. > > Not entirely incidentally, is there a list of the currently-needed > Lubuntu-related accessibility experiments or tests somewhere? > > I feel as though you are telling me that I should "just know" all kinds > of things about accessibility and how it is defined for (L)ubuntu, and > you seem to suggest that at least one Ubuntu accessibility roadmap > already exists that is plenty good enough already, so I should not be > asking for an Lubuntu-oriented roadmap or spec. Reality is that I don't > just know those things, so those things need stating, clearly (as in, > written down, online, such as on a wiki page) -- and I can't even find > the official Ubuntu accessibility roadmap yet! > > Jonathan > Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. Ubuntu Accessibility does not, in fact, set up any roadmap for any distribution except Ubuntu. Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mythbuntu, Edubuntu, etc, all set their own roadmaps for the distribution they develope. They do not rely on any other team exept their own to decide what they will do in a cycle. -- Charlie Kravetz Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] From cyber.druif at gmail.com Mon May 30 01:09:22 2011 From: cyber.druif at gmail.com (Chris) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 03:09:22 +0200 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <1306702673.2180.13.camel@saviour> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> <4DE2988C.4040804@theopenlearningcentre.com> <1306702673.2180.13.camel@saviour> Message-ID: It does use Ubiquity by default, but we are looking at an alternative installer cd as well. Might even promote it more then the "normal" installer? With metta, Chris Druif On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 22:57, Julien Lavergne wrote: > Le Sunday 29 May 2011 à 20:03 +0100, Alan Bell a écrit : > > not a roadmap as such, but I have started drafting a document on the > > Ubuntu infrastructure for accessibility > > http://pad.ubuntu.com/AccessibilityInfrastructure > > This will get transferred to the wiki at some point when it is nearly > > complete and the most glaring errors have been fixed. > Thanks Alan for the help :) > > > I don't know much about Lubuntu, only that it is based on something > > called LXDE as a window manager and is targeted at really old > > computers. > Let's say that LXDE is a GTK/GLib environnement, with very limited GNOME > depends :) > > > Looking at lubuntu.net it seems to be based on GTK, so I imagine just > > installing gnome-orca will pull in speech dispatcher at-spi2 and > > espeak, > > install onboard and you have an on-screen keyboard too. > Thanks, it's a good start :) They doesn't seems to pull to much GNOME > depends, so we could consider it. However, I'm more concerned about the > changes needed on our programs, to make them accessible. > > > Does it use > > ubiquity for the installer? > Yes. > > Regards, > Julien Lavergne > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > Post to : lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jmarsden at fastmail.fm Mon May 30 02:22:25 2011 From: jmarsden at fastmail.fm (Jonathan Marsden) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 19:22:25 -0700 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DE2988C.4040804@theopenlearningcentre.com> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> <4DE2988C.4040804@theopenlearningcentre.com> Message-ID: <4DE2FF61.8060408@fastmail.fm> On 05/29/2011 12:03 PM, Alan Bell wrote: >> How about sharing Ubuntu's current official accessibility roadmap with >> the Lubuntu developers, as a start? ... > not a roadmap as such, but I have started drafting a document on the > Ubuntu infrastructure for accessibility > http://pad.ubuntu.com/AccessibilityInfrastructure Does this mean that, in reality, there is no accessiblity roadmap, for any Ubuntu variant? Thanks. I made a few minor edits. A wiki would be better so there is a clear history of who edited what when, etc. > This will get transferred to the wiki at some point when it is nearly > complete and the most glaring errors have been fixed. I'd suggest just putting what you have into a wiki page, now, so that history will be maintained as the document is changed. What this lacks at this point is any sense of priorities -- *this* is more important to do first, *that* can wait, etc., or any sense of "to make a Qt app more easily accessible, to *this*; to make a GTK app more accessible, do *that*; to create an accessible installer, do *this other thing*". So it is currently useful as background info, but not in suggesting "what to do next". Also, links to the various things (software, APIs, etc.) that it mentions would be a great addition. > I don't know much about Lubuntu, only that it is based on something > called LXDE as a window manager and is targeted at really old > computers. Well, or some people just like a leaner faster desktop environment. I'm surprised to see how many Lubuntu users actually choose use it on hardware that would support Ubuntu or Kubuntu. > Looking at lubuntu.net it seems to be based on GTK, so I imagine just > installing gnome-orca will pull in speech dispatcher at-spi2 and espeak, > install onboard and you have an on-screen keyboard too. Does it use > ubiquity for the installer? Yes, but alternative installer(s) are something we want to see as we move to using real Ubuntu ISO build infrastructure. Jonathan From cjk at teamcharliesangels.com Mon May 30 03:40:11 2011 From: cjk at teamcharliesangels.com (Charlie Kravetz) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 21:40:11 -0600 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DE2FF61.8060408@fastmail.fm> References: <4DDCAA50.1040509@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DDD297C.3060203@fastmail.fm> <4DDF69C1.2060504@fastmail.fm> <4DDFAD64.1020208@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DE1FD92.2050609@fastmail.fm> <4DE2988C.4040804@theopenlearningcentre.com> <4DE2FF61.8060408@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: <20110529214011.5b21114b@teamcharliesangels.com> On Sun, 29 May 2011 19:22:25 -0700 Jonathan Marsden wrote: > On 05/29/2011 12:03 PM, Alan Bell wrote: > > >> How about sharing Ubuntu's current official accessibility roadmap with > >> the Lubuntu developers, as a start? ... > > > not a roadmap as such, but I have started drafting a document on the > > Ubuntu infrastructure for accessibility > > http://pad.ubuntu.com/AccessibilityInfrastructure > > Does this mean that, in reality, there is no accessiblity roadmap, for > any Ubuntu variant? No, it means each distribution makes its own accessibility roadmap, since we don't know what each distribution developers are capable of during a cycle. Kubuntu, for example, will have accessible installations and screen-reader this cycle. Xubuntu has not decided on its plans yet. Each variant is in fact a separate distribution, even if we all use the same repositories. > > Thanks. I made a few minor edits. A wiki would be better so there is a > clear history of who edited what when, etc. > > > This will get transferred to the wiki at some point when it is nearly > > complete and the most glaring errors have been fixed. > > I'd suggest just putting what you have into a wiki page, now, so that > history will be maintained as the document is changed. > > What this lacks at this point is any sense of priorities -- *this* is > more important to do first, *that* can wait, etc., or any sense of "to > make a Qt app more easily accessible, to *this*; to make a GTK app more > accessible, do *that*; to create an accessible installer, do *this other > thing*". So it is currently useful as background info, but not in > suggesting "what to do next". > > Also, links to the various things (software, APIs, etc.) that it > mentions would be a great addition. > > > I don't know much about Lubuntu, only that it is based on something > > called LXDE as a window manager and is targeted at really old > > computers. > > Well, or some people just like a leaner faster desktop environment. I'm > surprised to see how many Lubuntu users actually choose use it on > hardware that would support Ubuntu or Kubuntu. > > > Looking at lubuntu.net it seems to be based on GTK, so I imagine just > > installing gnome-orca will pull in speech dispatcher at-spi2 and espeak, > > install onboard and you have an on-screen keyboard too. Does it use > > ubiquity for the installer? > > Yes, but alternative installer(s) are something we want to see as we > move to using real Ubuntu ISO build infrastructure. > > Jonathan > -- Charlie Kravetz Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] From cyber.druif at gmail.com Mon May 30 07:19:04 2011 From: cyber.druif at gmail.com (Chris) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 09:19:04 +0200 Subject: Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 Message-ID: > > Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. Ubuntu Accessibility does > not, in fact, set up any roadmap for any distribution except Ubuntu. > Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mythbuntu, Edubuntu, etc, all set their own roadmaps > for the distribution they develope. They do not rely on any other team > exept their own to decide what they will do in a cycle. > > -- > Charlie Kravetz > Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] > Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] > > No, it means each distribution makes its own accessibility roadmap, > since we don't know what each distribution developers are capable of > during a cycle. Kubuntu, for example, will have accessible > installations and screen-reader this cycle. Xubuntu has not decided on > its plans yet. Each variant is in fact a separate distribution, even if > we all use the same repositories. > > -- > Charlie Kravetz > Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] > Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] > > > > ------------------------------ What I think is going wrong is difference in jargon. When the Lubuntu devs/people asked for a roadmap is what the Accessibility people would see as an priority list. When the Lubuntu people have their priority list, then they can create their own roadmap. As the Lubuntu devs are very motivated to get accepted as being an official derivative, they also want to get to some of the levels Ubuntu has achieved so far at least. Just to proof their worth. That's why they asked for a "roadmap" and current position of Ubuntu. But I think now that the situation has been cleared, I think a priority list would fill the gap of what the Lubuntu people are looking for. Then they can argue among themselves what would be a realistic roadmap. With metta, Chris Druif -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jmarsden at fastmail.fm Mon May 30 19:53:32 2011 From: jmarsden at fastmail.fm (Jonathan Marsden) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 12:53:32 -0700 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DE3F5BC.6020101@fastmail.fm> On 05/30/2011 12:19 AM, Chris wrote: > What I think is going wrong is difference in jargon. When the Lubuntu > devs/people asked for a roadmap is what the Accessibility people > would see as an priority list. When the Lubuntu people have their > priority list, then they can create their own roadmap. That sounds fine to me :) My current background assumption is that Lubuntu is "late to the accessibility party", just as it is late to "officialness", and that the other (already official) Ubuntu variants are, therefore, already substantially further along this particular path than we currently are in Lubuntu. So that we can better discover what needs to be done within Lubuntu, and in what order, I would like to know, with some reasonable degree of clarity and specificity: (A) What are the expectations of those seeking "adding accessibility" to Lubuntu, and what is the relative priority of each such expectation? (B) How do these expectations compare to what is already implemented in each of the other Ubuntu variants, and in Debian? (C) How do these expectations compare to what each of the other Ubuntu variants plans to do in the current (Oneiric) development cycle? Links to current information on what Debian and each Ubuntu variant has done, and plans to do, in this regard would therefore be useful. Lower priority, but still very useful, would be to also know: (D) How can we know when we have "got there" -- how can we verify that Lubuntu (or LXDE, or an application within Lubuntu) has attained a particular desired level or standard of accessibility? (I'm aware of http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for web site accessibility -- what are the application or OS or DE equivalents used in the Debian/Ubuntu community?). At this point, I *really* don't mind what anyone calls this documentation (specifications, blueprints, roadmaps, priority lists, other?). I also do not mind who created it (the Ubuntu accessibility team, or development teams within each Ubuntu variant, or even sabdfl himself!). My immediate concern is to determine whether such current documentation actually exists at all, and if it does, preferably some idea of its current level of acceptance or "officialness" (because great documentation that everyone else is ignoring may be less helpful than mediocre documentation that everyone else has already agreed to follow and implement!). And, very fundamentally: if this documentation does exist, where can we read it? Everything I have found so far seems either not actually a priority list/roadmap, not really Ubuntu-specific, or old and out of date. So perhaps my Google skills are lacking in this (accessibility) domain, and I need a little more help finding the real thing. If these requests and questions are unreasonable, or expose a total misunderstanding of the situation on my part, so be it, please enlighten me further :) Perhaps the most useful thing I have found so far is http://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/3.0/accessibility-devel-guide.html -- which is GNOME documentation, not Debian or Ubuntu documentation, and Lubuntu does not use GNOME. If, in the end, all of this boils down to "as a first major useful step, please just add orca and espeak and their dependencies to the Lubuntu CD"... that would be good to know :) Jonathan From cjk at teamcharliesangels.com Mon May 30 21:27:26 2011 From: cjk at teamcharliesangels.com (Charlie Kravetz) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 15:27:26 -0600 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DE3F5BC.6020101@fastmail.fm> References: <4DE3F5BC.6020101@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: <20110530152726.0be9672e@teamcharliesangels.com> On Mon, 30 May 2011 12:53:32 -0700 Jonathan Marsden wrote: > On 05/30/2011 12:19 AM, Chris wrote: > > > What I think is going wrong is difference in jargon. When the Lubuntu > > devs/people asked for a roadmap is what the Accessibility people > > would see as an priority list. When the Lubuntu people have their > > priority list, then they can create their own roadmap. > > That sounds fine to me :) > > My current background assumption is that Lubuntu is "late to the > accessibility party", just as it is late to "officialness", and that the > other (already official) Ubuntu variants are, therefore, already > substantially further along this particular path than we currently are > in Lubuntu. > > So that we can better discover what needs to be done within Lubuntu, and > in what order, I would like to know, with some reasonable degree of > clarity and specificity: > > (A) What are the expectations of those seeking "adding accessibility" > to Lubuntu, and what is the relative priority of each such expectation? > > (B) How do these expectations compare to what is already implemented in > each of the other Ubuntu variants, and in Debian? > > (C) How do these expectations compare to what each of the other Ubuntu > variants plans to do in the current (Oneiric) development cycle? > > Links to current information on what Debian and each Ubuntu variant has > done, and plans to do, in this regard would therefore be useful. > > Lower priority, but still very useful, would be to also know: > > (D) How can we know when we have "got there" -- how can we verify that > Lubuntu (or LXDE, or an application within Lubuntu) has attained a > particular desired level or standard of accessibility? (I'm aware of > http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for web site accessibility -- what are the > application or OS or DE equivalents used in the Debian/Ubuntu community?). > > At this point, I *really* don't mind what anyone calls this > documentation (specifications, blueprints, roadmaps, priority lists, > other?). I also do not mind who created it (the Ubuntu accessibility > team, or development teams within each Ubuntu variant, or even sabdfl > himself!). My immediate concern is to determine whether such current > documentation actually exists at all, and if it does, preferably some > idea of its current level of acceptance or "officialness" (because great > documentation that everyone else is ignoring may be less helpful than > mediocre documentation that everyone else has already agreed to follow > and implement!). > > And, very fundamentally: if this documentation does exist, where can we > read it? Everything I have found so far seems either not actually a > priority list/roadmap, not really Ubuntu-specific, or old and out of > date. So perhaps my Google skills are lacking in this (accessibility) > domain, and I need a little more help finding the real thing. > > If these requests and questions are unreasonable, or expose a total > misunderstanding of the situation on my part, so be it, please enlighten > me further :) > > Perhaps the most useful thing I have found so far is > http://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/3.0/accessibility-devel-guide.html > -- which is GNOME documentation, not Debian or Ubuntu documentation, and > Lubuntu does not use GNOME. > > If, in the end, all of this boils down to "as a first major useful step, > please just add orca and espeak and their dependencies to the Lubuntu > CD"... that would be good to know :) > > Jonathan > Well, I can not speak for all other distributions (variants), but Xubuntu will not be adding much. A user is welcome to add orca if they want to. We do have Onboard Keyboard, but I am still fighting to get the menu entry added, since Ubuntu removes it from the debian version. Xubuntu does not have a current blueprint, either. We do not use them. Of course, expecting any person on the Ubuntu Accessibility Team to know where all the teams blueprints and roadmaps are is asking a lot! Please understand that each distribution is a stand-alone thing, not a group effort by Ubuntu. -- Charlie Kravetz Xubuntu Project Lead Linux Registered User Number 425914 [http://counter.li.org/] Never let anyone steal your DREAM. [http://keepingdreams.com] From macoafi at gmail.com Mon May 30 23:10:30 2011 From: macoafi at gmail.com (Mackenzie Morgan) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 19:10:30 -0400 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <20110530152726.0be9672e@teamcharliesangels.com> References: <4DE3F5BC.6020101@fastmail.fm> <20110530152726.0be9672e@teamcharliesangels.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 5:27 PM, Charlie Kravetz wrote: > Well, I can not speak for all other distributions (variants), but > Xubuntu will not be adding much. A user is welcome to add orca if they > want to. We do have Onboard Keyboard, but I am still fighting to get > the menu entry added, since Ubuntu removes it from the debian version. Luke is fixing the menu entry in the next upload, I believe. -- Mackenzie Morgan From phillw at ubuntu.com Mon May 30 23:10:32 2011 From: phillw at ubuntu.com (Phill Whiteside) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 00:10:32 +0100 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <4DE3F5BC.6020101@fastmail.fm> References: <4DE3F5BC.6020101@fastmail.fm> Message-ID: Hiyas everyone, I am proposing a slightly different path. @accessibility: We're going to consider things. Our commitment to accessibillity is not diminished, just our way of interacting. @lubuntu:Please consider what I have proposed. Regards, Phill. On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Jonathan Marsden wrote: > On 05/30/2011 12:19 AM, Chris wrote: > > > What I think is going wrong is difference in jargon. When the Lubuntu > > devs/people asked for a roadmap is what the Accessibility people > > would see as an priority list. When the Lubuntu people have their > > priority list, then they can create their own roadmap. > > That sounds fine to me :) > > My current background assumption is that Lubuntu is "late to the > accessibility party", just as it is late to "officialness", and that the > other (already official) Ubuntu variants are, therefore, already > substantially further along this particular path than we currently are > in Lubuntu. > > So that we can better discover what needs to be done within Lubuntu, and > in what order, I would like to know, with some reasonable degree of > clarity and specificity: > > (A) What are the expectations of those seeking "adding accessibility" > to Lubuntu, and what is the relative priority of each such expectation? > > (B) How do these expectations compare to what is already implemented in > each of the other Ubuntu variants, and in Debian? > > (C) How do these expectations compare to what each of the other Ubuntu > variants plans to do in the current (Oneiric) development cycle? > > Links to current information on what Debian and each Ubuntu variant has > done, and plans to do, in this regard would therefore be useful. > > Lower priority, but still very useful, would be to also know: > > (D) How can we know when we have "got there" -- how can we verify that > Lubuntu (or LXDE, or an application within Lubuntu) has attained a > particular desired level or standard of accessibility? (I'm aware of > http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for web site accessibility -- what are the > application or OS or DE equivalents used in the Debian/Ubuntu community?). > > At this point, I *really* don't mind what anyone calls this > documentation (specifications, blueprints, roadmaps, priority lists, > other?). I also do not mind who created it (the Ubuntu accessibility > team, or development teams within each Ubuntu variant, or even sabdfl > himself!). My immediate concern is to determine whether such current > documentation actually exists at all, and if it does, preferably some > idea of its current level of acceptance or "officialness" (because great > documentation that everyone else is ignoring may be less helpful than > mediocre documentation that everyone else has already agreed to follow > and implement!). > > And, very fundamentally: if this documentation does exist, where can we > read it? Everything I have found so far seems either not actually a > priority list/roadmap, not really Ubuntu-specific, or old and out of > date. So perhaps my Google skills are lacking in this (accessibility) > domain, and I need a little more help finding the real thing. > > If these requests and questions are unreasonable, or expose a total > misunderstanding of the situation on my part, so be it, please enlighten > me further :) > > Perhaps the most useful thing I have found so far is > > http://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/3.0/accessibility-devel-guide.html > -- which is GNOME documentation, not Debian or Ubuntu documentation, and > Lubuntu does not use GNOME. > > If, in the end, all of this boils down to "as a first major useful step, > please just add orca and espeak and their dependencies to the Lubuntu > CD"... that would be good to know :) > > Jonathan > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > Post to : lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > -- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tony.sales at rncb.ac.uk Tue May 31 09:13:39 2011 From: tony.sales at rncb.ac.uk (Tony Sales) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 09:13:39 +0000 Subject: Running Speakup on Ubuntu Message-ID: <58C326E7D5A7B84190C31DE21721FF1D26992B18@MAIL1.rncb.ac.uk> Is anyone able to get speakup running on anUbuntu installation (or live CD) which has the default orca screen-reader option enabled - in other words - which has Orca running and Pulseaudio running in user mode? Or even on a plain Ubuntu without Orca enabled - I have been trying to do this for a week and have not made any progress. I am not sure whether the problem is pulsaudio or speech-dispatcher or speech-up - but I suspect it maybe caused by speech-dispatcher as I am able to run pulseaudio and speech-up without any error messages. But I get an error about speech-dispatcher being disabled if I try to start that in a console. Speech-dispatcher seems to be set not to run in system mode by default. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com Tue May 31 20:13:43 2011 From: alan.bell at theopenlearningcentre.com (Alan Bell) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 21:13:43 +0100 Subject: [Lubuntu-desktop] Creating An Accessibility Specification for Lubuntu 11.10 In-Reply-To: <20110530152726.0be9672e@teamcharliesangels.com> References: <4DE3F5BC.6020101@fastmail.fm> <20110530152726.0be9672e@teamcharliesangels.com> Message-ID: <4DE54BF7.3030606@theopenlearningcentre.com> On 30/05/11 22:27, Charlie Kravetz wrote: > > Well, I can not speak for all other distributions (variants), but > Xubuntu will not be adding much. A user is welcome to add orca if they > want to. We do have Onboard Keyboard, but I am still fighting to get > the menu entry added, since Ubuntu removes it from the debian version. my understanding is that we are going to stop removing the icon because it looks spectacularly daft in Unity where we offer other on screen keyboards available to download but hide the installed one from the user.