Comment 15 for bug 275450

[quote]
there is supposed to be an easy way to start onboard when booting with a11y enabled
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Onboard does not depend on the accessibility framework. Onboard is a rather simple onscreen keyboard and thus it wanted to avoid the issues involved when running at-spi.

[quote]
In my experience, that means, just open a terminal and type the application name.
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I would even go further: I suppose that the typical onscreen keyboard user does not have a hardware keyboard; so he can't type the name of an application in the terminal.

Fortunately, GDM has the accessibility icon that opens the accessibility dialog where the user can start onboard; otherwise the users needing an onscreen keyboard would not even be able to log in. However, automatically starting the onscreen keyboard in the desktop session when the user started it during the GDM session also does not solve the problem: if the user for example closes the onscreen keyboard by accident; he would have to search for it in a situation where he would not be able to type.

Experienced users might click with the mouse through the file manager to go into the /usr/bin folder and start it from there; or open the Main Menu to unhide the desktop entries (supposing he knows about their existance). But should Ubuntu not be the distribution also usable by unexperienced people?

Anyway, I find the situation a bit odd: onboard is an onscreen keyboard that was submitted by Ubuntu as a GSOC project because they wanted an onscreen keyboard that was easy to use. So why not make it more easily accessible (in other words: more easy to find and start) by people that are not initiated about onscreen keyboards or that are new to Ubuntu!?