How's Karmic these days?

[Francesco Fumanti]

Hi,


Maybe that I should add a few words for the pointer only users.

(In the following, "pointer users" means users that are able to move the 
pointer in any direction, but that are not able to perform any input 
with a hardware keyboard.)


a) For pointer users able to click, karmic provides a system that they 
can use out of the box.

- GDM has been patched so that it starts onboard as the onscreen 
keyboard. (onboard is the onscreen keyboard shipping with ubuntu already 
for several releases)

- Onboard is also available in the GNOME session and its desktop icons 
are in the Universal Access menu. However, this menu and the desktop 
icons are hidden on a default Ubuntu a installation; but it is possible 
to use the Main Menu control panel to make them appear.

So, a default Ubuntu Karmic installation can be used by these users 
without help from anybody.


b) For pointer users not able to click, karmic is also usable, but only 
after a person able to click has performed a few configurations needed 
by these users.

Fortunately, Ubuntu (to be more precise, it is already shipped in GNOME) 
ships by default an accessibility tool called mousetweaks that allows 
these users to perform pointer clicks by software.

- GDM is not accessible for pointer users that cannot click.


A person with administrative privileges can set up GDM to launch 
mousetweaks in conjunction with onboard. Instructions about how to do it 
can be found in the Help of GDM.

Remarks:
-- I don't know whether Assistive Technology is running in GDM on a 
system out of the box. As mousetweaks requires Assistive Technology, GDM 
has to be configuration configuration configured to run it if it is not 
already the case. Instructions about how to do it can be found in the 
Help of GDM.
-- These users must never deactivate the onscreen keyboard in GDM, 
because it will also deactivate dwelling and they will not be able to 
reactivate it without the help of another person.



- The GNOME session is also not accessible for these people out of the 
box, but the solution is simple: Assistive Technology has to be 
activated for the GNOME session and the dwell click applet has to be 
installed on the GNOME panel.

Once this has been done, the GNOME session becomes accessible also for 
pointer users that are not able to click.


There is however a bug that has to be mentioned: In fact, there is an 
incompatibility between gksu and Assistive Technology. For example, if 
you open the Synaptic Package Manager, the gksu dialog for 
authentication appears. After entering the password, the desktop begins 
to become a bit irresponsive. To make the desktop fully responsive 
again, the user has to kill the gksu process in the dialog. To not get 
into this situation, a work around is to call the applications that use 
gksu directly from the terminal with sudo. (The authentication dialog of 
policykit does not have this problem.)


Cheers

Francesco



Nolan Darilek wrote:
> Anyone using it regularly? Lots of folks not using accessibility seem to 
> be having good luck with it, so I'm thinking of making the upgrade. How 
> is it from an accessibility perspective? And are there any more 
> potential audio breaking changes planned?
> 
> Thanks.
>