Ubuntu-Mate Accessibility Review (1st draft)

[Dave Hunt]

This is a brief account of my experience with Ubuntu-Mate 15.04 Beta 2. 
If I were unfamiliar with Mate, and its accessibility quirks, I'd have 
had a lot of trouble; things are not really intuitive.  Review below...


HTH,


Dave



When the live system booted, I got the sound of bongos. At this point, I 
used 'ctrl+s' to toggle speech on.  The introductory dialogue, with 
"install Ubuntu" and "Try Ubuntu" options is fully accessible; I tabbed 
to "try", and hit the space key.  My system went into a desktop; I only 
knew it was ready by the long absence of drive activity; an introductory 
sound would be helpful, here.  When I figured that enough time had 
passed, I used 'alt+super+s' keys to toggle the speech on; this is a 
nice feature, and familiar to those using GNOME 3.  Orca came on, as 
expected, but nothing was focused.  I just happened to try 'ctrl+alt+d' 
and found that the desktop gets focus.  From here, I could set my screen 
reader preferences in the expected way.  Once I had Orca set up, I 
started exploring the menu system, by entering with 'alt+f1' keys.  I 
found the expected three-column menu set on the top panel.  I exited the 
menus and tried getting to the top panel, with 'alt+ctrl+tab' and 
'alt+ctrl+esc' keys, but could only get to the bottom panel.  Even with 
focus on the bottom, I found no way to reach the top, where my wifi 
options are likely shown.  I went back into the menus, and found 
Preferences. In the 'look and feel' section, I found a new item called 
Mate Tweak, which I started, with hopes of messing with the interface. 
I found panels options, including Ubuntu Mate, Ubuntu Mate with Mate 
Menu, and an interesting one--  Redmond.  Once I chose this option and 
left the tweak tool, I found I had a single-panel layout, with a single 
column of menus, similar to the layout you'd find on Trisquel 7.  I had 
to use 'ctrl+alt+escape' to get to the panels, though, even after 
binding 'ctrl+alt+tab' for switching between desktop and panels. 
Anyway, once I got to the new bottom panel, I could connect to my wifi 
as expected.   Having unlocked this monumental achievement, I launched a 
web browser, just to check connectivity. Since all seemed well, I closed 
the browser, and hit the 'install' button on the desktop.

The installer is a typical session of Ubiquity, about which many of us 
have written before; it hasn't changed much, in terms of accessibility, 
since 14.04; I will mention, however, I had to toggle Orca a few times, 
when switching from one page to the next.

When I started my new system, I found that the login greeter did not 
come up talking, as it would in Trisquel. The 'f4' keystroke got Orca 
talking on the dialogue, but attempts to explore it caused the greeter 
to crash, thereby preventing logins.  I gave the 'reboot' command from 
another console, and waited. This time, the greeter came up talking, and 
I just entered my password.  A talking Mate session, set up almost 
according to a previously-made configuration, came up.  In the new 
session, "alt+ctrl+tab' does not work as it should, though it is shown 
as bound in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialogue.  I set the Redmond panel 
layout, as mentioned above, and did a few post-install things. The 
system is now running.