totally agree, and sharing this with the unity-design list so more
people can see it. 12.04 had been pretty decent compared to other
development cycles up to a few weeks ago, then it all went wrong. I am
not happy about some of the stuff that landed this cycle with zero
design consideration for accessibility. Stuff like the shortcuts overlay
on long hold of the super key is quite literally broken by design. The
HUD landed in 3d and now Unity2d with no functionality for screen reader
users (silent in 3d all suggestions are "push button" in 2d), currently
the global menu and indicators are almost entirely broken, probably due
to the same thing that broke the menus. I know there have been
improvements, tedg has done an improvement to the menus by applying role
hints to stop everything being a checkbox menu item (caused by the
global menu using a check box menu item for everything irrespective of
whether it is semantically a checkbox item just because they *look* the
same). Menus are currently silent except for reading out the hint
(checkbox or radio button) and the shortcuts. I think some of the
indicators were briefly not called "image", but right now they all
appear to be called "window". I want to start doing some documentation
and screencasts and filing of small bugs and fixing strings, but I can't
do any polishing because it is all broken. I do know that Unity was
supposed to not land broken this cycle, but I can't imagine that orca or
onboard feature in the pre-landing test scripts. Are these scripts
published?
Alan.
On 06/03/12 14:04, Nolan Darilek wrote:
Ugh! We get to this point in every release, where there are patches
for a whole bunch of issues that take forever to land. Meanwhile,
testers can't examine the new release to see what new issues were
revealed after the fixing of the old. So there's no accessibility
*test* cycle, just a bunch of bugs that go away after it's too late to
address the newly-revealed ones. Meanwhile, accessibility users aren't
confident in the newer betas, as even the final release can contain
major issues that block productive use.
This isn't a slam on Luke, but on Canonical. If Canonical is pushing
out Ubuntu for Android, surely they can put more accessibility people
on the Ubuntu project, especially as it rolls out everywhere. It's
going to be *more* important to have a highly accessible Ubuntu if it
runs on my phone, tablet and TV. Canonical is in an awesome position
to fix this once and have it run across the board, yet I only see Luke
addressing patches and other volunteers occasionally popping in to
remark on things.
Seems I've asked this before, but whom do we have to ask to get
Canonical to put more people on the accessibility team as they surely
are doing so for mobile/TV development? Is there some process other
than posting to this list again to better let our voices be heard?
When folks patch these accessibility issues, those patches should land
in a short timeframe. As of now I'm on 11.04 because 11.10 had
accessibility issues I couldn't live with, and 12.04 is shaping up to
be the same. Unfortunately, Firefox is moving on, and I'm experiencing
focus stickage/accessibility hangs that aren't likely to be fixed
because I'm on GNOME 2.32, and I can't see things getting better as
Firefox rockets onward, either.
If I don't get feedback on how to approach Canonical, I'll put up and
promote a change.org petition before the week is out. We need to get
more people helping Luke ASAP, especially as I for one don't want to
get left behind when Ubuntu lands on Android.
Canonical, please stop deprioritizing accessibility. 11.10 was a
transitional release that was highly broken in many respects. Blind
users at least can't wait until 12.10 for an Ubuntu with speaking
menus, speaking notifications and access to content in Ubuntu's
default mail client.
On 03/06/2012 04:39 AM, Boris Dušek wrote:
Hello,
my colleague is using current Precise with Orca and Unity 2D and is
encountering the following problems:
1. In 2D, if you open the menu using Alt+letter (e.g. Alt+S for
"&Soubor" in Czech,
could be Alt+F for "&File" in English), it does not announce menu
item names
when navigating left/right and up/down.
2. In 3D, neither Dash (Alt+F2) nor Launcher (Alt+F1) are accessible
(you can
navigate them, but no speech)
Luke mentioned for some of these problems that "patch exists" or is even
coming some time ago (approx. half of February), but the problems
above still persist.
Can I find some of those patches anywhere so that I can make a
patched version of Unity?
Or better, are those patches coming in some updated unity package for
Precise?
Thanks and best regards,
Boris Dušek
BRAILCOM,o.p.s.
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