Comment 1 for bug 749700

Well, the thing about reading its own help files are the accessibility of those files. Ubuntu Natty has -- in the most recent releases -- migrated to WebKitGtk based help. WebKitGtk has recently gotten a bunch of bug fixes to be more accessible. Similarly, now that those bugs were fixed, I have recently added the support required to work with WebKitGtk-based Yelp.

In order for Orca to read WebKitGtk-based Yelp, one must activate caret navigation via pressing F7. This is a Yelp thing and it is only required to be done initially. In addition, it is my understanding that those installing Ubuntu via the accessibility profile will (in subsequent releases) have this pre-toggled on for them.

Beyond the above, there have been some changes in WebKitGtk that have been included in WebKitGtk 1.4. Luke has suggested to me that Ubuntu may or may not be able to incorporate that version this upcoming release. If you don't, Orca will do a few odd things when presenting help content. If Ubuntu wants help to be accessible, Ubuntu needs to include WebKitGtk 1.4 -- ideally in the actual release; alternatively as a really easy to find PPA.

Lastly, this is just a guess, but people needing to read the Help content most of all are sighted users who are not familiar with screen readers, but can see the nifty 'Help' button. The majority of our actual users, I suspect, would prefer the default button to be Preferences rather than help.

Having said that, I have been known to be wrong. ;-) When questions come up like this, in which there's no technical reason why we couldn't/shouldn't make the change, I ask the users on the Orca-list. I would encourage you to do so. If they all tell me, "Yeah, only a fool would make the Preferences button the default button," I will change it upstream. Fair enough?