GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 536467
[blocked] Mnemonics not indicated for clickable items in Firefox and Thunderbird
Last modified: 2013-01-02 20:59:49 UTC
Please describe the problem: When in a menu in Firefox or Thunderbird, mnemonics for menu items are not indicated in either speech or braille when focus reaches the menu item. These mnemonics are not indicated when Numpad-Enter is pressed with focus on the menu item, as is the behavior in other applications. Steps to reproduce: In Firefox or Thundrebird, pull down a menu.1. 2. As each menu item is focused, press Numpad-Enter 3. Actual results: As the menu item is focused, the label for that item is spoken, along with any defined hot keys. Pressing Numpad-Enter results in "Toolbar", the name of the menu, the label for that menu item, the hot-key sequence (if exists), and "item x of xx", where x is that item's number in the menu and xx is the total number of items in the menu. Expected results: The output as above, followed by the mnemonic that will activate the menu item if pressed when the menu is open. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: The mnemonics are not indicated in braille, either.
We'll try to get to this for GNOME 2.24.0. Thanks for reporting this bug!
According to this Atk documentation: http://library.gnome.org/devel/atk/1.22/AtkAction.html#atk-action-get-keybinding atk_action_get_keybinding "Returns a keybinding associated with this action, if one exists. The returned string is in the format "<a>;<b>;<c>" (i.e. semicolon-delimited), where <a> is the keybinding which activates the object if it is presently enabled onscreen, <b> corresponds to the keybinding or sequence of keys which invokes the action even if the relevant element is not currently posted on screen (for instance, for a menu item it posts the parent menus before invoking). The last token in the above string, if non-empty, represents a keyboard shortcut which invokes the same action without posting the component or its enclosing menus or dialogs." When we ask Gecko (i.e. Firefox or Thunderbird) for the keybinding, all we get is element c from the above string. Because we're not being given the mnemonic, we certainly can't report it. I'll open a bug over at mozilla and block this bug against it. As for indicating them in braille, are we doing that in other apps?
Mozilla bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440568 Retargeting to future as there's nothing we can do about this while blocked.
*** Bug 536449 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The blocking bug that we need Mozilla to fix was opened in 2008. It was last pinged in 2011 by Marco Zehe. I just pinged it again now that it's 2013. Having said that, when they fix their bug, Orca will automatically start presenting these mnemonics. Since there's nothing we need to do -- or even can do -- on the GNOME side and since this bug is so old, I'm closing ours out. Sorry.