GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 363003
Magnifier/GOK accessibility doesn't work well in gdmgreeter
Last modified: 2010-06-04 20:04:38 UTC
In gdmlogin, it has a windowmanager (gui/gdmwm.c) which supports STRUTS, so that when you launch the magnifier, it grabs a section of the screen and causes the login dialog to move so it is not obscured. Normally at login time, the magnifier is shown in half-screen mode. Since gdmgreeter does not have a window manager running at all, the magnifier will take up half the screen and obscure whatever is behind it. gdmgreeter probably should also use the gdmwm code for window manager support, and redraw the login screen respecting STRUTS so nothing is obscured. This may require fixing some/all of the default themes so that they display reasonably in half-screen geometry. Not sure how well they would look in this environment. Users with dual-monitors can set up the magnifier to use the second screen for magnification instead of using half-screen mode, but it should also work with in half-screen mode for users with just one monitor. Or perhaps a more creative magnification mechanism can be used with gdmgreeter. Perhaps context sensitive magnification that magnifies the area around the mouse cursor and not use gnome-mag? For the time being, users with magnification needs are recommended to use gdmlogin or use gdmgreeter with dual screens.
Perhaps another/easier way to support magnifier would be to simply add hotkeys (or buttons, etc.) that would increase/decrease the fontsize on the fly. This way users who need magnification could be supported without needing to run the magnifier. Note that STRUTS support is probably still needed for GOK. GOK pops up a window that allows the user to type by pointing at an on-screen keyboard. Need some mechanism to ensure that this pop-up doesn't obscure important parts of the GDM theme (like a button that the user may need to press). Some distros could probably work around this problem by setting up their GDM theme and the way GDM launches GOK in a way that "just works". However it might be hard to really get this working with all possible screen resolutions without having STRUTS support in GDM.
Note that even though there might be a workaround for GOK and magnifier, that future AT programs may also require displaying a GUI so fixing this with STRUTS would be a better long-term solution than finding workarounds for each AT program as needed.
Note bug #355005, bug #363003, and bug #380575 are all related to gdmgreeter accessibility issues. Perhaps an idea would be to add a hotkey to allow users to swtich from gdmgreeter to gdmlogin if the user has an a11y need that is not met by gdmgreeter but is met by gdmlogin?
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. However, you are using a version that is too old and not supported anymore. GNOME developers are no longer working on that version, so unfortunately there will not be any bug fixes for the version that you use. By upgrading to a newer version of GNOME you could receive bug fixes and new functionality. You may need to upgrade your Linux distribution to obtain a newer version of GNOME. Please feel free to reopen this bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of GNOME.