there seem to be significant accessibility issues in gnome using the orca screen reader. this is most particularly a problem when trying to use YAST.
the problem(s):
accessing any of the submenus using keyboard navigation with orca speech only yields the resultant speech “read only text”. this doesn’t seem to have a workaround I have been able to locate.
other system management programs (such software updater) only speak the frame name and give me no readable text inside the application.
the yast (console mode box) speaks the main items just fine, but doesn’t seem to speak any of the submenus at all.
now, as a totally blind person, I need accessibility that works, and so far, opensuse isn’t very accessible. this means that opensuse is unusable for me and this needs to change radically. now, if I had access to a sighted person with a video camera, I could record all the issues and post them here for the devs to look it… but since I don’t at this time, I need some feedback on how to get the applications (gnome, yast, orca) to cooperate.
Are you using 12.1? As it is quite new yet, not all bugs have been ironed out. Perhaps you could try it with another DE (Gnome 2 in 11.4, KDE or LXDE).
There’s also this site: Orca - GNOME Live! with more actual info about orca and gnome.
well, I would try KDE if it weren’t QT based. KDE is notoriously not accessible (except for about 5 apps in the core of the desktop environment).
as for gnome, I installed that which came with the 12.1 installation media (got some sighted help with that as the installer doesn’t even have working sound). right now, I cannot do anything with the system unless I get more sighted help (which is at the convenience of said help, not mine).
my other box is based on the VINUX distro and has worked ok (except that ubuntu has decided to go with the unity desktop which is even less supported than gnome). personally, I wouldn’t mind an rpm based version of VINUX, but that suggestion will raise the dead with all the arguments it would cause).
ok,
since this initial posting there have been developments (none of which are good). yesterday, yast (command line and gui) decided to not even speak the main menues anymore. they immediately crash out. I gave up on it at 5 this morning. I went back in to that room an hour ago to try and resolve the issues only to discover that the machine locks up during the transition from grub into the loading kernel. the only I know this at all was the fact that I had a sighted assistant helping me with other things around the house.
I now face having to erase and reinstall and that is not possible without braille or speech support from the outset.
I am going to the bugs reporting tool to report these problems.
-eric
On 2011-12-06 23:16, eoyen wrote:
> ok,
> since this initial posting there have been developments (none of which
> are good). yesterday, yast (command line and gui) decided to not even
> speak the main menues anymore. they immediately crash out. I gave up on
> it at 5 this morning. I went back in to that room an hour ago to try and
> resolve the issues only to discover that the machine locks up during the
> transition from grub into the loading kernel. the only I know this at
> all was the fact that I had a sighted assistant helping me with other
> things around the house.
I’m sorry.
I think this happens because these features are little tested during the
testing phase - and that needs volunteers testing them and reporting in
bugzilla the problems, one by one, while the distro is alfa or beta.
If the sight impaired people join efforts and concentrate on reporting all
the problems they find on one distro, nagging the devs, you may get a
better result. If only one or two people complain now and then, you will be
easily ignored.
I can not even imagine the problems you may have, so I can not report those
problems.
I have also the feeling that you need a stable release distro, with long
term support, not one that is updating every 8 months, a phase during which
I assume you need sighted help.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)