Unity does not appear to have a Keyboard Access Status indicator

[truant]

Binary package hint: unity

When keyboard access mode "stickykeys" is enabled, it needs to have some kind of indicator to show the user which state the various lockable keys are in.

This was previously provided by the AccessX Status panel applet in GNOME.

I cannot seem to find how it's done in Unity. I'm sure the Accessibility Team won't have overlooked such an important feature, but how and where it's activated and placed on the Unity panel/indicator tray/whatever should probably be made more clear.

A working stickykeys implementation is a big deal for a lot of people with access issues.

I've been testing with the 32bit Natty, but I'm sure arch doesn't make a difference to this kind of bug.

Apologies if this is the wrong package, etc. etc.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the GNOME control dialog is still there and activate the indicator, it's not an unity issue

[truant (launchpad-ninj4)]

But how does one add the GNOME indicator to the Unity panel?

If Unity is to be the default interface, it should be made clear to users with access issues that they'll need to switch back to GNOME Desktop.

[truant (launchpad-ninj4)]

Just to be clear, I wasn't reporting a bug in AccessX Status, I was reporting an access issue with Unity. The comparison with AccessX Status was just to highlight what appears to be missing in Unity.

So, no offence, but I'm changing this back away from invalid, as the issue does still exist.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you describe what you would do in GNOME and why you can't do it in unity?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

one way to get the icon if I understand your issue is to open the application place, type "keyboard", click on the keyboard properties dialog, select the accessibility tab and check on the first option there

[truant (launchpad-ninj4)]

Ah, no - not that icon. Sorry, I wasn't clear.

In GNOME, I would right click a panel, select "Add to Panel" and choose "Keyboard Accessibility Status"

This would give me a line of 6 square icons representing Alt, Ctrl, Super etc. These icons change state depending on which keys are being (temporarily or permanently) locked by stickykeys.

I can't do it in Unity because I can't add anything to the panel.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

ok, that makes sense, it's not really an unity bug by itself then but rather a request for a new indicator

[truant (launchpad-ninj4)]

yeah, that sounds about right.

it's a pretty serious access issue though. lot of people - myself included - won't really be able to use Unity until this is sorted.

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

this should be filed against the package that provides the panel applet, whichever that may be.

[truant (launchpad-ninj4)]

You mean the Access Status Appindicator that currently doesn't exist and so can't have a bug filed against it? :-)

Seriously though, I'd appreciate some guidance on how I should go about progressing this issue? StickyKeys without an indicator applet/indicator/whatever is pretty much useless and therefore Unity currently represents something of a step backwards for Ubuntu's usually excellent accessibility.

[Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure)]

If there is no Access Status Appindicator package, you can file a bug against the indicator-applcation package. The best way to initiate this bug report would probably be to produce the bug (as I understand it, you don't have to take any special steps to produce it on you machine...so just make sure you're in a Unity desktop session, so that the bug is occurring), then run ubuntu-bug with the PID of the running indicator-application-service process. I highly recommend reading https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs first if you have not done so already (that will make the previous sentence in this comment make sense, plus it contains lots of useful information about how to best report bugs in Ubuntu and what kind of information to include).