At 8:42 AM -0500 9/21/07, Brian Cameron wrote: >Right. It might make sense to provide configure options so users can >configure whether they want GOK on onscreen to be the >on-screen-keyboard. This way distros could easily pick between them >at configure time. This would basically cause the gestures in the >keymouse and dwellmouse gesture listeners to get set to the right >command to launch each program. > ><snip> > >Again, the new D-Bus interfaces may make it easier to manage >communication between GDM and the session to inform the session >what AT programs to launch when the user logs in.
What about the following approach: Instead of making GDM launch a specific program, it could indicate what Assistive Technology to launch. A partial list of Assistive Technologies could be: (I tried to find one on the Internet, but did not have much success; so here is what currently comes to my mind) slow keys sticky keys mouse keys onscreen keyboard dwelling voice recognition magnifier screenreader braille output ... GDM would for example only tell to start the onscreen keyboard, leaving it to a sort of "Preferred Application"-Setting to decide whether to start gok, onboard, xvkb,... There already is a "Preferred Application"-Settings Panel for the GNOME-session that allows the user to choose what application to launch for visual impairement and what application to launch for mobility impairement. But it would have to be adapted in that case. Ubuntu being the only distribution that I have used, I don't know whether such an approach would make sense. It would render GDM independent of specific applications, but it would require a compatible Preferred Application Setting for the GDM Session; and also for the GNOME session, if we want the GNOME session to automatically enable the same Assistive Technologies (screen reader, or onscreen keyboard, or...) as those that wer enabled in the GDM session. (not necessarily the same application, for example the system administrator could set gok as onscreen keyboard during GDM, but a particular user could set the onscreen keyboard preference to use Dasher in his GNOME session) >At the moement, I think it makes the most sense to try to get a11y >plugged back into the D-Bus GDM branch and get it working. Once that >is done, it should be easier to talk about how we want to add new a11y >features to GDM. Though D-BUS has a mechanism to start applications, I don't know whether it could also be used in the scenario above; in other words, start a specific Assistive Technology without indicating what application to start. I only wanted to present the idea here. Anyway, the approach indicated in the above quotation will probably be the most practical. >If you also are interested in enhancing GDM to launch AT programs >in more novel ways (e.g. by directly integrating them into GDM), then >we should discuss. I looked for any standards on the Internet about how the different Assistive Technologies should be started, but I was not able to find something really useful yet. Now I wonder if any standards exists, and if they do exist, whether they are Desktop or even OS independent. Cheers Francesco _______________________________________________ Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
