Software-center not accessible - Please avoid webkit!

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Bill Cox wrote on 22/02/10 09:27:
>
> Ubuntu developers need to know not to use webkit.  Any application
> based on webkit cannot be accessed by Orca in any meaningful way.   The
> Ubuntu Software Center, as a result, is 100% useless for the blind.
> Software-center should be modified to used gecko.

It's easy to latch on to a perceived quick fix to a problem. But
switching Ubuntu Software Center to Gecko wouldn't fix its
accessibility, for three reasons.

First, as Dmitrijs Ledkovs pointed out, WebKit is much easier to embed
than Gecko is. If we had to use Gecko, it's fairly likely we wouldn't
have been able to release Ubuntu Software Center 1.0 on time at all. And
if we tried to switch right now, quite probably we wouldn't be able to
release 2.0 on time in Lucid, so we'd end up shipping 1.1.something --
which would still use WebKit. At this point, time and money would be
better spent fixing accessibility bugs in WebKit/GTK (which would also
help other applications, such as Yelp) than in porting Ubuntu Software
Center to Gecko (which would help, if anything, only Ubuntu Software
Center).

Second, today I debugged one of the WebKit problems with help from
Willie Walker. The text in the WebKit view shows up in Accerciser, but
Orca doesn't speak it. So we think it might be a bug in Orca, not in
Ubuntu Software Center or WebKit/GTK. <http://launchpad.net/bugs/433104>

And third, other accessibility bugs in Ubuntu Software Center don't
involve WebKit at all. One involves a custom GTK control
<http://launchpad.net/bugs/526384>, and others involve vanilla GTK.
<http://launchpad.net/bugs/455307> <http://launchpad.net/bugs/455317>

>                                                   Until that happens,
> the blind will need to keep using gnome-app-install... except that
> it's broken in Lucid.   Please stop making such mistakes, as it makes
> Ubuntu less and less useful for the blind over time.

It wasn't a mistake: we knew that there were problems with WebKit/GTK
accessibility, we trusted that they would be fixed within a few months,
and that people could use gnome-app-install if necessary until they were
fixed.

When you say gnome-app-install is "broken in Lucid", what bug are you
referring to? You don't seem to have reported or subscribed to any bug
reports in that package.

> If there is any way to help Ubuntu developers test accessibility
> during development, let me know.  I believe the blind would be happy
> to help.
>...

Examples of things that would help:

*   Fix (or find someone to fix) bugs in Accerciser that make
    debugging other bugs more difficult.
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/526952>
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/418468>

*   Debug the software item page bug in Accerciser and Orca, providing
    precise steps to reproduce it (unless I've gotten there first).
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/455320>

*   Fix (or find someone to fix) other bugs in USC, to give
    the primary developers more time to fix accessibility bugs.
    <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-center>

Examples of things that would not help:

*   Commenting on USC bug reports saying "This bug is caused by using
    Webkit, rather than gecko", regardless of whether the bug has
    anything to do with WebKit. <http://launchpad.net/bugs/455307>

*   Posting on ubuntu-accessibility@ about how important accessibility
    is. We already know it's important.

Cheers
- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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