In the next release we want to improve accessibility in the core applications of Xfce. The Gtk+ toolkit already provides most of the required accessibility, but there are a lot of parts of the interface (custom widgets, buttons without label) that are hard to access with a screen reader.

This includes the following tasks:

• Test the modules with Orca and Accerciser.
• Add additional contexts and/or bindings (atk).
• Some applications need to install Orca scripts.
• Make sure mnemonics work in all the dialogs and menus (keyboard navigation).

More information about accessibility can be found in the Gnome accessibility guide.

Currently if Xfce4-session is compiled with –enable-gnome (enable gconf) and Gnome compatibility is checked in the setting, we check the /desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility key and if set to true, the string array in /desktop/gnome/accessibility/startup/exec_ats is spawned (see code).
This is obviously hard to find and also not fully working since the required Gtk modules are not loaded as well (this probably was handled by gdm, but not any more?).

Testing can be done by running Orca or Accerciser and start the application with GTK_MODULES=“gail:atk-bridge” in the environ.

• Possibly provide a 2nd session desktop file to launch a session with full accessibility enabled (assignee: Nick).
• Drop the gconf-depended accessibility loading, but make something that works in Xfce systems too (assignee: Nick).
  • Xfce4-session starts the at-spi helpers and takes care of adding “gail:atk-bridge” to the GTK_MODULES environment variable.
• The Log out dialog needs accessibility support implemented (assignee: Jerome).

• Bind xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu to Alt+F1.

• Add screen read tab in Accessibility dialog.
• Add a checkbox in Accessibility dialog to enable accessibility support for the session.
• What other options do we want in the “Assesible Technologies” tab? Large pointer size? Hight contrast theme? Or option to enable a status icon with quick accessors for those actions?

Assignee: Nick

• Support for keyboard navigation on the panel (bug #2411).
  • The bottom panel should be accessible (somehow) by keyboard.
• Notification area
  • The notification area should be accessible (somehow) by keyboard.
  • Icons in the notification area lack accessibility support.
  • The individual elements/icons in the notification area seem to lack associated accessible objects.
  • When the menu associated with an icon appears, there is no accessible event.
  • When the selection changes within one of the aforementioned menus, there is no accessible event.
• Combo boxes in the Clock dialog should derive their name from the displayed text ('16:13' not '%R')

Assignee: Nick

• Thunar emits no events when the selection changes in the list of icons (panel on the right hand side). It does emit events when the selection changes in the tree on the left.

• xfrun4 seems to be completely inaccessible (will be removed in 4.10).

• When pressing Alt+Tab to switch windows, the window first appears and displays text. We get a window:create event and an object:state-changed:showing event for the window. But at that time, the window seems to lack accessible children. As a result, ATs do not seem to have anything they can present when the window first appears. (Subsequent presses of Alt+Tab are accessible and now presented by Orca via a small script which has just been committed to Orca master.)

• Application Finder
• Application Menu
• All dialogs tested so far
• xfwm4 window switching (minus the first appearance)

• Terminal seems accessible, probably just needs an Orca script (joanie will do)
• Arrowing amongst the desktop icons is not being presented by Orca (joanie will look into)
• Log out dialog still does not appear to be emitting accessible events (even though a11y is now enabled for my session)