instant messaging

[Peter Vágner]

Hello,
I now have ubuntu 12.04 installed on the usb drive and I am working with 
it occassionally at home to get me familiarize with stuff etc.
What I have found a bit problematic is using empathy.
Please don't see thiss as a criticism, I would ust like to see if 
anybody faces the same issues and where they need to be posted in order 
to address them.
I am unable to read incoming chat messages using standard reading 
keyboard shortcuts I even don't know how to focus the field where the 
incoming chat messages are displayed. I can use flat review to read these.
While closing conversation window the whole system freezes as the 
contacts list window gains the focus. I haven't yet managed to recover 
from this other than restarting the machine. While the system is frozen 
no audio comes through my soundcard, I've tried to restart orca blindly 
but I haven't managed.
Empathy uses system's notifications to anounce incoming events. 
Sometimes I am missing these notifications because I am usually 
interupting them accidentally while doing something else. As a result I 
am unable to work out who I've just received a chat from. I have found a 
way around it I can see recent conversations in the history but I think 
this is verry inconvenient comparing it to the experience sighted people 
have. They can immediatelly recognize who has sent the recent message by 
looking at the contact list window. Is there a waay to have 
conversaation window open automatically when a new chat message comes in 
if conversation with that chat partner has not yet been started?
I am unable to get the details about a contact in my list. Empathy 
displays status messages for each contact on the contact list if the 
contact has some. Can we get access to that?
In the context menu for each contact in the list there is an item saying 
details. After activating it gnome-contacts application is shown however 
I have found this application verry inaccessible. I don't know how to 
see the contact's details. I caan add new contact but I don't know how 
to browse contacts and get their details accessible.

I see this as a one huge problem. Instant messaging is verry problematic 
in the current state. Is there something I might be doing wrong or 
really this is not yet ready for a blind user?

I am IM-ing a lot and I'm also excited about empathy's ability to do 
voice calling a feature I extremelly miss in windows however how empathy 
works in my setup is currently unnacceptable for me.

If there is something I can do please let me know.

Greetings

Peter