unity-design team mailing list archive

[Alan Bell <alanbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/05/12 16:39, Nadine Ledwig wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm highly sight impaired,  and the last two years, I was used to  use 
> ubuntu 10.4 with orca and the compiz plugins eZoom-Desktop  and 
> negativeplugin.
>
> Now, i installed ubuntu 12.04 on my desktop and I've some problems.
> In unity-2d, dash and louncher works well, but i can not  zoom and 
> invert colors.  Without that two features,  it is hard to use my 
> computer for me.
> In unity-3d, i configured that two plugins and it works well. But, 
> dash, louncher, and the alt+tab task switcher  are not spoken by orca 
> and not zoomed. That means, they are nearly unusable  for me.
> I can only open the dash, starting to type and press enter, and hope 
> the right application will start.
>
> Is there an aditional package to make unity-3d accessible for orca? Or 
> is it possible to use unity-2d in conjunction with compiz?
>
>
>
> Hope for help,
> Nadine
unity3d is somewhat accessible with orca, but as you note the dash and 
some other stuff isn't really working. Zooming doesn't work on the panel 
and launcher (except for the badly implemented and annoying top bar 
shadow . . .) because that is all drawn through the nux toolkit which is 
unaffected by any compiz transforms. I know this is really bad for a 
huge number of people with mild to moderate vision issues (almost 
certainly our largest group of users of assistive tools - basically 
anyone who might wear glasses and enjoy the large print section of the 
local library) and I will be raising this at the Ubuntu Developer summit 
next week.

unity2d with compiz might be a better strategy, and in fact unity2d with 
the Wayland compositor might be the real way forward, I have been 
talking to the wayland developers about accessibility including orca and 
zoom and text cursor tracking zoom and colour filters, it is important 
to get this stuff in as early as possible and designed in, rather than 
tacked on afterwards. With features like the HUD landing broken and the 
global menus all being checkbox menu items until we got the hint set 
right and the shortcut overlay being totally inaccessible it is clear 
that accessibility isn't being designed in early enough to new features 
and this is creating more unbudgeted work as people try to fix the 
broken stuff that was never designed to be accessible.

Alan.

--
I work at http://libertus.co.uk