[indiana-discuss] Early work on accessible live cd and installer for Indiana

[Willie Walker]

Neat!  I've put the accessible install stuff on the back burner for now 
for a couple reasons: 1) *everyone* is busy and I want to leave them 
alone to get their stuff out the door; 2) I'm one of the *everyone*.

After our big CSUN conference in early March, though, I hope to jump 
back on this hot and heavy and will probably make my office an 
all-Indiana office instead of SX{D,C}E.  ;-)

Will

Brian Nitz wrote:
> Willie, have you seen this:
>
> http://blogs.sun.com/setje/entry/happiness_through_ignorance
>
> It looks like this is how you enable alternative consoles during a grub
> boot. If this isn't the answer, maybe this blog's author would know the
> answer to your questions.
>
> Willie Walker wrote:
>> Hey Brian:
>>
>> Sorry for the delay - I was traveling and then came back to a GNOME
>> 2.21.91 deadline. I did accomplish a lot in the hotel room, and many
>> thanks to those in the #install chat room who helped me get a lot
>> farther.
>>
>> We are definitely very close to an accessible install for Indiana. The
>> thing I'm excited about is that it's not a completely insane idea and
>> it is well within our reach. I still need to write up my notes, but
>> I'm guessing the next steps are:
>>
>> 0) Work to get the needed SFE packages (below) onto the CD. I also
>> need to check in some changes to the SUNWgnome-a11y-speech.spec file
>> to build the eSpeak driver if eSpeak is available.
>>
>> 1) Figure out how to set the appropriate properties via GRUB and then
>> make them have an effect on the runtime environments of root and jack
>> for the live CD. In particular, if one selects "Screen Reader" (or
>> whatever we put on the GRUB screen), we need to dynamically make these
>> modifications to ~root and ~jack:
>>
>> ~root/.gconf/.gconf/desktop/gnome/accessibility/%gconf.xml -- new file
>> to enable a11y
>> ~root/.orbitrc -- new file to allow jack to access GUI apps (nwamd)
>> running on jack's display
>>
>> ~jack/.gconf/.gconf/desktop/gnome/accessibility/%gconf.xml -- new file
>> to enable a11y
>> ~jack/.conf/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop -- new file to start the
>> PulseAudio daemon
>> ~jack/.conf/autostart/orca.desktop -- new file to start Orca
>>
>> Related to this, I need to figure out how to set
>> GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge in the environment that's running nwamd.
>> Without it, the nwamd GUI dialogs are inaccessible. Plus, I need to
>> figure out why the autologin stuff isn't setting things up jack's a11y
>> environment properly -- right now, I need to log out and log back in
>> on the live CD in order for the a11y environment to work right.
>>
>> 2) We need to write a script for Orca to provide better access to the
>> installer. We also need to do a thorough keyboard-only analysis of the
>> installer. I think it's pretty good, but there might be some room for
>> improvement (e.g., first letter navigation for very long lists in the
>> timezone/region selection combo boxes).
>>
>> 3) For gravy, we could look into autostarting brltty for people with
>> braille displays. Not sure how to do that, and I need to figure out
>> where the missing symbol lives (ld.so.1 _ex_unwind).
>>
>> I wonder - should we consider making an accessibility project page for
>> OpenSolaris/Indiana if one doesn't already exist? I'm trying to find
>> the best spot to put my notes (once I write them) and for people to
>> contribute/share.
>>
>> Will
>>
>> On Jan 30, 2008, at 6:59 AM, Brian Nitz wrote:
>>
>>> Willie,
>>>
>>> This is fantastic! I've often though about how useful an accessible
>>> livecd could be to provide accessibility on borrowed computers at
>>> libraries, coffee shops, but I had no idea we were so close with
>>> OpenSolaris.
>>>
>>> I'll have a look at the ubuntu "F5 accessibility" option and your iso if
>>> you provide a link to it. It may be a customization of the grub menu.
>>>
>>>
>>> Willie Walker wrote:
>>>> Hi All:
>>>>
>>>> This is just an FYI of some midnight work I've been doing -- literally
>>>> in the middle of the night due to insomnia. ;-)
>>>>
>>>> I lead the Orca screen reader project, and I've been doing
>>>> accessibility
>>>> work for X Windows, Java, GNOME, etc., almost 20 years.
>>>>
>>>> One of the important developments I've seen in the accessibility space
>>>> is an accessible live cd and installer for people with disabilities: I
>>>> saw a number of people with disabilities migrating to Ubuntu and away
>>>> from a number of distributions this time last year because of Ubuntu's
>>>> accessible live CD and installer.
>>>>
>>>> The Caiman work and the distro_constructor have helped enable us to get
>>>> moving in this direction. With a number of people's help, I was
>>>> actually able to put some missing pieces together and create a live CD
>>>> which I could manage to get speaking with Orca. Not perfect, but pretty
>>>> neat.
>>>>
>>>> Here's where things stand:
>>>>
>>>> 0) Almost everything was already in place. Yeah!
>>>>
>>>> 1) I needed to pull in some SFE packages. These were to get me eSpeak
>>>> (a very small speech synthesis engine) working. The SFEespeak.spec
>>>> file is new as of this morning since I was tired of updating my
>>>> IPS the manual way. Here's the extra packages. The *-devel's
>>>> probably are not needed.
>>>>
>>>> SFEespeak SFElibsndfile SFEpulseaudio
>>>> SFEespeak-devel SFElibsndfile-devel SFEpulseaudio-devel
>>>> SFElibsamplerate SFEogg-vorbis SFEpulseaudio-root
>>>> SFElibsamplerate-devel SFEogg-vorbis-devel
>>>>
>>>> tarred and zipped, these packages account for an extra 1459233 bytes,
>>>> still keeping the iso image small enough to fit on a CD.
>>>>
>>>> 2) I also had to hack here and there to get some other smallish
>>>> files in place (e.g., the gnome-speech driver for eSpeak). They'll
>>>> fall out with a reworked gnome-speech spec file.
>>>>
>>>> 3) There's still lots of work to do, and help is welcome:
>>>>
>>>> a) I would love to have an initial dialog similar to
>>>> Ubuntu's where the user can select accessibility options.
>>>> This is the very first screen you see when you boot from the
>>>> Ubuntu live CD, and it allows you to select the assistive
>>>> technology you'd like to use for the live session. If you
>>>> look really hard at the following image, you'll see an
>>>> "F5 Accessibility" option at the bottom of the screen:
>>>> http://www.easy-ubuntu-linux.com/images/livecd-boot-menu-zoomed.png
>>>>
>>>> No clue how to do this. But, if it can be done, it might be
>>>> a way to dynamically modify the 'jack' user with stuff to launch
>>>> Orca and the things it needs.
>>>>
>>>> For now, if I can just make a one-off CD with a modified 'jack'
>>>> user burnt on the CD, I'd be happy. Not quite sure how to do
>>>> this, though. If anyone wants to push me in the right direction,
>>>> I'm all ears. :-)
>>>>
>>>> b) I'd also like to figure out how to start brltty automatically.
>>>> Right now, some prerequisite is missing (ld.so.1 _ex_unwind:
>>>> can't find symbols), so a little more work is needed before
>>>> getting to that.
>>>>
>>>> c) We will need to script a fair amount in Orca for the installer.
>>>> These kinds of wizard dialogs wreak havoc on Orca's focus
>>>> tracking logic, and we end up needing to provide a custom
>>>> script to make sure important information is presented to
>>>> the user. Nothing we didn't already know, though, based upon
>>>> the investigation we did last year.
>>>>
>>>> d) Things like the network automagic dialog are completely
>>>> inaccessible. I don't know what's going on with that at all,
>>>> but it doesn't even seem to appear on the accessibility radar
>>>> screen. Heck, I don't even know what app is running to cause
>>>> that to pop up. If it's the nwamd process running as root,
>>>> we have some work to do to modify root's environment (e.g.,
>>>> enable accessible and set up a /.orbitrc file).
>>>>
>>>> 4) I'm struggling to reproduce these things on a 79b box. Getting there
>>>> one step at a time.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, fun stuff. In addition, I'll bet we can get a whole
>>>> community of people migrating to Indiana if we can make the accessible
>>>> install a reality.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks folks! The Indiana work and the Caiman work are really helping
>>>> in many ways. Again, help is welcome, too. :-)
>>>>
>>>> Will
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> indiana-discuss mailing list
>>>> indiana-discuss at opensolaris.org
>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
>>>>
>>>
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>>
>