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=== Work items (things to fix) ===
 * lxpanel titles.

=== The story ===

Lubuntu have only a few devs, who also have full time jobs, plus someone who is familiar with [[http://www.w3.org/WAI/ |Web Accessibility Initiative]]. We do not currently have people with the experience to guide Lubuntu on what is required for Lubuntu to be fully accessible.
We ask that if anyone would like to assist in the road-map of what Lubuntu should be concentrating on and striving towards, that they please make a quick introduction via the [[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/GettingInvolved | mailing list]].

As we await to see how much accessibility is inbuilt in the 'official' ISO building, this area is on hold.

There is a rough guide of requirements, below. Without some assistance it is extremely unlikely Lubuntu can get any of these things in place for 11.10. 

Urgent: Screen-reader, magnifier, on-screen keyboard, mouse/switch dwelling settings (mousetweaks) for non-keyboard users 

Contact has been made for a desktop theme for those with poor eye-sight, but again this is unlikely to be available in time for 11.10.

'''Lubuntu is committed to accessibility''' It will happen, it can happen faster if people help.

Below are some of our chats.


=== Documentation ===
  * http://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/stable/
  * https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-accessibility
  * https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-accessibility/2011-May/005252.html

=== Note from Knoppix ===
{{{
in my own efforts to get orca better with LXDE I conversed with Klaus Knopper the author of Knoppix.
I have put his notes below..
I also tried with nto much success to try and figure out why orca did not work with thunar though it claims to have great gtk support.
Please find notes below and hope it is helpful.

export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN="gtk" GTK_MODULES="gail:atk-bridge"
before starting a GTK program makes it aware of orca as screenreader.
You need to start orca as well, of course.

The panel containing the menu (lxpanel in our case) will send the
"highlighted" menu item to orca automatically if the two variables
mentioned before are set before starting lxpanel. The tricky part is to
pop up the menu without the mouse. Unfortunately, lxpanel does not have a
"hotkey" for this on its own, but the command "lxpanelctl menu" will
notify lxpanel to show the menu. Now you add this command to the window
managers hotkey list (which is different in compiz-fusion and metacity),
and you are there. Once the hotkey (Alt-F1 in Knoppix) is pressed,
lxpanelctl menu will be called, and the menu pops up.

I did not find a way yet to browse through the dock icons in lxpanel,
though it must be possible somehow, since using the mouse will focus the
icons and lets orca speak them. Maybe, just the internal link between
icons and a hotkey for selecting them is missing.

pcmanfm works quite well with orca, though the "desktop background"
version of it is not very talkative. If you start the windowed version
of pcmanfm, you can switch between canvases with eithger TAB or the
cursor keys (sometimes it's not very intuitive to understand which one
to use).

It should be possible, yet I'm unsure how to make the desktop manager
part of pcmanfm put the focus on the first icon on the desktop. Once one
item has the focus, you can browse through the desktop icons with the
cursor keys.
surely pcmanfm
could need some accessibility enhancements concerning hotkeys and their
documentation.

in regards to accessing the panel,
The only way I found so far is the "lxpanelctl" command which is to be
called by the window manager. Alt-F1 pops up the menu in Knoppix.

The hotkey modifications for compiz-fusion and metacity concerning the
lxpanel menu is present in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45knoppix. Here is an
excerpt:

--

case "$STARTUP" in
 *lxde|lx*) # Need to change Alt_F1 and Alt_F2 hotkeys in order to make LXDE menu accessible
 sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = Disabled/g' \
        -e 's/as_run_command0_key *=.*$/as_run_command0_key = <AltF1/g' \
        -e 's/as_command0 *=.*$/as_command0 = lxpanelctl menu/g' \
           "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null
 gconftool --type string \
           --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu disabled \
           --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog disabled \
           --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 '<AltF1' \
           --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_2 '<AltF2' \
           --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 'lxpanelctl menu' \
           --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_2 'lxpanelctl run'
 ;;
 *) # Change Alt-F1 back when not running lxde
 sed -i -e 's/as_main_menu_key *=.*$/as_main_menu_key = <AltF1/g' \
           "$HOME/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini" 2/dev/null
 gconftool --type string \
           --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu '<AltF1' \
           --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_run_dialog '<AltF2'
 ;;
esac
}}}

=== Note from Accessibility team ===
{{{
(22:46:48) phillw: All we need, and it is really important, is that accessibilty tell us what is "urgent for basic accessibillity ", what is "medium term" and what would "be really nice to have". 
(22:46:52) charlie-tca: but as to priorities, how do we set them? Take the list pia created, decide what the team is able to add for Oneiric, label the rest as O + 1. If Lubuntu can use compiz, users can add the magnifier plugin.
(22:47:06) charlie-tca: If not, try to find a screen magnifier that works with it.
(22:47:16) charlie-tca: okay
(22:47:57) charlie-tca: Urgent: Screen-reader, magnifier, on-screen keyboard, mouse/switch dwelling settings (mousetweaks) for non-keyboard users
(22:48:06) phillw: lubuntu has shown itself to be quite capable of taking, certainly compiz 2D in. but we do not Unity.
(22:48:14) charlie-tca: Is all that possible for Oneiric?
(22:48:49) phillw: Having now the list - i can at least ask!
(22:48:53) charlie-tca: espeak is a text based screen reader, we need a gui based one, too
(22:49:30) phillw: the author of espeak did a GUI?
(22:49:46) charlie-tca: I know of two, orca and kaccessible. Kaccessible needs qt and kde, orca needs a lot of gnome
(22:50:11) phillw: give me a few minutes.
(22:50:43) charlie-tca: We also need both high-contrast and low-contrast themes
(22:51:51) charlie-tca: Ideally, dasher needs to work, since it is the best on screen writing program we have at the time.
(22:51:58) phillw: now, I met this young man again when I joined accessibility, he put a GUI out.. http://forum.phillw.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=33
(22:52:41) phillw: I was impressed, it still needed a bit opf work, but it did work.
(22:52:52) charlie-tca: Will it work with the monitor turned off?
(22:53:12) charlie-tca: If we need a sighted person to read the errors, if fails
(22:53:59) phillw: next time you see RainCT on line, ask him!
(22:54:03) charlie-tca: It has taken me about three years to get a theme for Xubuntu that works for visually impaired users
(22:54:57) charlie-tca: This is what makes setting priorities for a team so difficult. We have many needs for handi-capped users, but we can only fix one or two at a time.
(22:55:14) phillw: I have also been given a few projects to have a look at by Alan Bell, but relaistically they are a at least 2 cycles away.
(22:55:32) charlie-tca: According to Canonical, Accessibility in unity worked great! According to testing it, it fails miserably. We can't use it.
(22:56:28) charlie-tca: Two cycles is nothing. If the project fits the distribution, you plan for it, and you add those plans to release notes.
}}}