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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