620915 - IMAP folders subscription inaccessible due to missing descriptions

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 360510

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Hynek Hanke]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; cs-CZ; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101013 Ubuntu/10.10 (maverick) Firefox/3.6.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101006 Thunderbird/3.1.5

Under File->Subscribe->Folder list, there is a collapsable list of tables when in the first cell is name of a folder and in the second cell is a checkbox which shows whether the folder is subscribed or not.

When the Orca screen reader reads this widget, it will report the folder names to the blind user but not the information whether the folder is currently subscribed or not.

This is can easily be verified browsing the widget structure by the 'accerciser' tool, screenshot posted as an attachment.

The suggested way to fix it is to find why does the cell with the checkbox widget not export any information on its status to the accessibility infrastructure, and address this point.

Thank you!



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enable accessibility infrastructure 
2. Launch thunderbird, open the subscription dialog
3. Launch accerciser, browse the widget into the Folders subscription widget
4. Check that the information of whether a folder is subscribed is not exported
Actual Results:  
Orca screen reader doesn't read information about the status of folder subscriptions, because it is not exported into the accessibility infrastructure. A blind person can't use the dialog as a result.

Expected Results:  
The user can hear (/accerciser displays):
 Inbox subscribed
 Brailcom unsubscribed
etc.
or
 Inbox checked
 Brailcom unchecked
etc.

Comment 1

[Hynek Hanke]

Attachment: Screenshot showing accessibility interface exported by Thunderbird (folder subscription)

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Marco could you confirm this ?

Comment 3

[Hynek Hanke]

Just a reminder after quarter of a year with no activity. I think the fix for this could be very simple, just adding a missing label. And it would be a major improvement in terms of accessibility!

Comment 4

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Just a reminder after quarter of a year with no activity. I think the fix for
> this could be very simple, just adding a missing label. And it would be a major
> improvement in terms of accessibility!

We would certainly take a patch adding this and would help you getting started on making the patch happen.

Comment 5

[Hynek Hanke]

I didn't mean to complain and sorry if that sounded so, I meant my message just as a reminder and encouragement, trying to draw someones attention :)

But no, it is not realistic to expect me or anyone from the accessibility community to send a patch for every issue like this:( Only if software developers of the various tools take the responsibility to fix bariers that their software presents to some people themselves, only then do we have a chance to really help even the handicapped.

I did a lot of work on testing Thunderbird with accessibility tools, I've written a guide for blind people on how to use it with Orca and we also train both blind people and teachers of blind people with it, so I'm not just talking and compalining.

We need the one who is responsible for this component to look into it.

Thanks for understanding!

Comment 6

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

I just now realize that this is a duplicate, and that we have a patch on the other bug which will address this. Let's cross our fingers for positive reviews so this can get into TB 3.3!