Bug 123864 - No feedback for screen reader when radio button for underline attribute changes
Summary: No feedback for screen reader when radio button for underline attribute changes
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
5.2.0.4 release
Hardware: All All
: high major
Assignee: Michael Weghorn
URL:
Whiteboard: target:24.2.0 target:24.8.0 target:24...
Keywords: accessibility, bibisected, bisected, regression
Depends on:
Blocks: a11y, Accessibility Split-Group-Buttons Formatting
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2019-03-05 10:12 UTC by Jean-Philippe MENGUAL
Modified: 2024-04-16 15:47 UTC (History)
11 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Jean-Philippe MENGUAL 2019-03-05 10:12:29 UTC
Hi,

Using Orca master:
1. So far, ctrl-u enabled underline and said "Underline on/off".
2. Now, underline is still enabled, but Orca says only "Underline button". It is no longer able to describe it status, unlikely it does for italic, bold and other buttons.

Regards
Comment 1 Alex ARNAUD 2019-03-15 09:07:25 UTC
@Caolan: Could it be possible to request you help on this ?

I aware you're very well familiar of UI :).

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 2 Alex ARNAUD 2019-03-15 09:14:02 UTC
I can reproduce this with:
Version: 6.3.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: 4aa8a6ab08b755e3d82860e8dbc294f854336477
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.9; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; 
TinderBox: Linux-rpm_deb-x86_64@86-TDF, Branch:master, Time: 2019-03-14_17:51:01
Locale: fr-FR (fr_FR.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 3 Alex ARNAUD 2019-04-01 09:37:11 UTC
I can reproduce this on LibreOffice 6.0.6.2 but not on earliest release of LibreOffice 6.0 release cycle (5.4.0.0.alpha1+).

I'll do a bibisect ASAP.

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 4 Alex ARNAUD 2019-04-01 16:39:02 UTC
This is the result of my bibisection on repo https://git.libreoffice.org/bibisect-linux-64-6.0:
 39cd2b9108fd2b536bea08f5fb7ce97377bcd292 is the first bad commit
commit 39cd2b9108fd2b536bea08f5fb7ce97377bcd292
Author: Jenkins Build User <tdf@pollux.tdf>
Date:   Fri Jul 14 15:05:21 2017 +0200

    source 52dfefec8da5d7f25c39218fd890cad6491728ab
    
    source 52dfefec8da5d7f25c39218fd890cad6491728ab

:040000 040000 b2764b8359a7dadf360e7a6f377194e609ad9c7e 737a8c5bdefa4b67c32018b11be9ce838608fe45 M	instdir

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 5 Alex ARNAUD 2019-04-02 08:39:37 UTC
@Jan-Marek Glogowski: it looks like it's your commit that has introduced this issue.

I'm not a LibreOffice Developper, I've redo the bibisect a second time to be sure and it's your commit 52dfefec8da5d7f25c39218fd890cad6491728ab that has introduced this regression.

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 6 Alex ARNAUD 2019-04-02 08:54:10 UTC
I suggest to increase the severity of this issue at nowadays a blind person couldn't know if underline is enabled or disable when he does the shortcut.

Is there a rule about severity of issues ?

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 7 Xisco Faulí 2019-04-04 15:17:50 UTC
Hi Alex,
Does it happen if you run LibreOffice with SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen ?
Comment 8 Alex ARNAUD 2019-04-05 09:30:25 UTC
(In reply to Xisco Faulí from comment #7)
> Hi Alex,
> Does it happen if you run LibreOffice with SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen ?

The gen backend seems completely inaccessible so I can't tell you.

Otherwise, the issue appears both with GTK2 and GTK3 backends on my Debian 9 "Stretch".

Maybe Patrick or Vstuart could confirm the issue on Windows.

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 9 Alex ARNAUD 2019-04-05 09:56:02 UTC
> Maybe Patrick or Vstuart could confirm the issue on Windows.

It seems worse on Windows 10 with NVDA 2018.4.1, I obtain completely no feedback when activate/deactivate bold, italic or underline with LibreOfficeDev 6.3 built the 2019-04-05.

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 10 V Stuart Foote 2019-04-05 12:57:02 UTC
On Windows 10 Home 64-bit en-US (1809) with NVDA 2019.1 and
Version: 6.3.0.0.alpha0+ (x64)
Build ID: 4ca9db953d59d93ce8e3a54a36d23ed52b9c62a9
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0; UI render: GL; VCL: win; 
TinderBox: Win-x86_64@42, Branch:master, Time: 2019-03-26_03:34:16
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded

On the Standard toolbar, the Underline button does report its status.

Either with navigation via keyboard, or on mouseover.

Program emits a "pressed" status that NVDA picks up and sounds. The same as for the other text attribute button actions visible by default--Bold, Italic and Strike-through.
Comment 11 Alex ARNAUD 2019-04-05 13:22:02 UTC
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #10)
> On Windows 10 Home 64-bit en-US (1809) with NVDA 2019.1 and
> Version: 6.3.0.0.alpha0+ (x64)
> Build ID: 4ca9db953d59d93ce8e3a54a36d23ed52b9c62a9
> CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0; UI render: GL; VCL: win; 
> TinderBox: Win-x86_64@42, Branch:master, Time: 2019-03-26_03:34:16
> Locale: en-US (en_US); UI-Language: en-US
> Calc: threaded
> 
> On the Standard toolbar, the Underline button does report its status.
> 
> Either with navigation via keyboard, or on mouseover.
> 
> Program emits a "pressed" status that NVDA picks up and sounds. The same as
> for the other text attribute button actions visible by default--Bold, Italic
> and Strike-through.

Do you confirm that it works when you select a text, keep the cursor into the document content and press control + u ?

Best regards,
Alex.
Comment 12 V Stuart Foote 2019-04-05 14:52:57 UTC
On Windows 10 Pro 64-bit en-US (1803) with NVDA 2018.4 and
Version: 6.2.3.1 (x64)
Build ID: 9ba025bafb03b962c34687cf87806cc03a3a7436
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0; UI render: GL; VCL: win; 
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded

In Writer _none_ of the text attribute controls (Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough) sound when their shortcuts are used while in document canvas.

But they all sound when applied as "pressed" when formatting is applied from the Formatting toolbar (F10 - F6 - F6 and TAB to desired attribute), and then placing focus back on text cursor in document canvas (ESC).

I'm not sure about prior releases, did this ever sound from document canvas? I'll have to play with it a bit.
Comment 13 V Stuart Foote 2019-04-05 15:18:00 UTC
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #12)

> In Writer _none_ of the text attribute controls (Bold, Italic, Underline,
> Strikethrough) sound when their shortcuts are used while in document canvas.
> 

And should have noted, the actual formatting applied is read back in NVDA when I have set NVDA preferences for Document Formatting from the Font block of types.

So, events are consistently emitted ("pressed", or silent) for attributes set via the Toolbar input mechanisim, and resulting formatting is readback from document canvas.  And events are consistently not emitted for text attributes set via keyboard accelerators.  So, assume there is no linkage to the button status?

Should it sound the button (formatting or style) state (pressed/released), or the  state of the text attribute (applied/removed)?

On Toolbar -> <Tab> onto button widget; "Bold pressed", "Underline released"

While in document at text cursor -> via Keyboard <Ctrl+I> "Italic applied", <Ctrl+U> "Underline removed"
Comment 14 V Stuart Foote 2019-04-05 16:18:36 UTC
For 5.3 and at 5.3 the Underline command went through some changes in creating a Split button for use on Sidebar.

Noticed when testing this against a 5.3 build that the Formatting toolbar was listed as a "Dropdown button" and was "checked" unlike the other "Button"(s) which were "pressed".

At 5.3 we got two UNO controls (bug 101672):

.uno:Underline -- which is now used on the Sidebar -> Properties deck (from 5.2.0 to current)

.uno:UnderlineSimple -- which is now used on the Formatting toolbar (from 5.3.0 to current)

At 5.3 Windows and NVDA still do not report the attribute changes with any of the shortcut/accelerators. Maybe should, but they were consistent.

But is the disconnect in Orca somehow related to work on the Underline UNO control?
Comment 15 V Stuart Foote 2019-04-05 16:29:04 UTC
s/For 5.3 and at 5.3/For 5.2 and at 5.3/

And, at some point prior to 6.2 and master/6.3.0 (probably at 5.4.0) the split button is removed from the Formatting toolbar in favor of the UnderlineSimple control.

I don't have a load of 5.4, 6.0 or 6.1 available to check against. But I'll poke at it later.
Comment 16 QA Administrators 2023-03-23 03:23:57 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 17 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-11-08 23:33:51 UTC
Reproduced with Orca in recent trunk build, using both the Ctrl + U shortcut or pressing the toolbar button:

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: ff3fb42b48c70ba5788507a6177bf0a9f3b50fdb
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

However, I am not sure about the bibisection in comment 4 as I can reproduce the issue in 5.4.0.0.alpha1 as well as in 5.2.0.0.beta2.

Text read is "Underline push button" without an on/off status. This is the same as for other split buttons like Font Color and Highlight Color, but it makes sense for them as they are not on/off toggles like the underline button is.

Issue is the same for Bullet and Numbering list buttons, so probably a more general issue to fix with such "toggle split buttons".

Michael W., you might be interested?
Comment 18 Michael Weghorn 2023-11-11 09:06:11 UTC
(In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #17)
> Text read is "Underline push button" without an on/off status. This is the
> same as for other split buttons like Font Color and Highlight Color, but it
> makes sense for them as they are not on/off toggles like the underline
> button is.

Bold/italic buttons have role ATSPI_ROLE_TOGGLE_BUTTON, while the underline button has ATSPI_ROLE_PUSH_BUTTON. All of them have a "checked" state set when active, so likely Orca has special handling for toggle buttons here.
This will likely need looking into Orca source code and maybe coordination what's the proper way to expose it for Orca to announce it. There's also a "pressed" state that looks like it might be suitable, but it's currently not set.
Technically "on/off" is enough to represent the bold/italic state fully, while underline has a wider range of possible values (off, single line, double line,...), but since the button is shown as pressed when any underline is used, screen readers should IMHO also announce it likewise.

In any case, pressing Orca_Key+F to have Orca report text formatting makes Orca announce the underlined state when present, so that can be used to find out whether or not it's active for now.
Comment 19 Commit Notification 2023-11-14 07:09:41 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/d6c6472bbe1c90b733a4d69c4c8528f4de3750d3

tdf#123864 a11y: Add new AccessibleStateType::CHECKABLE

It will be available in 24.2.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 20 Commit Notification 2023-11-14 07:10:44 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/d5a21cca3851488d904ef7d4d86ae8fa8cd3ec12

tdf#123864 gtk4 a11y: Handle CHECKABLE/CHECKED state independent of role

It will be available in 24.2.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 21 Michael Weghorn 2023-11-14 07:17:52 UTC
(In reply to Michael Weghorn from comment #18)
> Bold/italic buttons have role ATSPI_ROLE_TOGGLE_BUTTON, while the underline
> button has ATSPI_ROLE_PUSH_BUTTON. All of them have a "checked" state set
> when active, so likely Orca has special handling for toggle buttons here.

Indeed, Orca has this in `src/orca/scripts/apps/soffice/speech_generator.py`


        def _generateToggleState(self, obj, **args):
            """Treat toggle buttons in the toolbar specially. This is so we can
            have more natural sounding speech such as "bold on", "bold off", etc."""
            result = []
            role = args.get('role', AXObject.get_role(obj))
            if role == Atspi.Role.TOGGLE_BUTTON \
                and AXObject.get_role(AXObject.get_parent(obj)) == Atspi.Role.TOOL_BAR:
                if AXUtilities.is_checked(obj):
                    result.append(messages.ON)
                else:
                    result.append(messages.OFF)
                result.extend(self.voice(speech_generator.SYSTEM, obj=obj, **args))
            elif role == Atspi.Role.TOGGLE_BUTTON:
                result.extend(speech_generator.SpeechGenerator._generateToggleState(
                    self, obj, **args))
            return result

Since the Underline button can be checked/unchecked (or pressed/not pressed), I think that using the TOGGLE_BUTTON role for it (and other toolbar buttons with similar behavior) seems reasonable (at least for the AT-SPI case). I've started working on this, but noticed a few additional things that need some work while doing that.

In addition, Qt currently doesn't have an equivalent for the TOGGLE_BUTTON role, and was not mapping the CHECKABLE state to AT-SPI, so that also needs changes on Qt side. First one:
https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtbase/+/517844
Comment 22 Commit Notification 2023-12-19 08:30:32 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/8bc6119812223643b50dcd22c504f9f853976352

tdf#123864 a11y: Handle new CHECKABLE state in misc places

It will be available in 24.8.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 23 Commit Notification 2023-12-19 08:30:35 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/eef4d5cbd10a042bd3b5fb555e0bf9b0dd7d1215

tdf#123864 a11y: Handle new checkable state for VCLXAccessibleMenuItem

It will be available in 24.8.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 24 Commit Notification 2023-12-19 08:31:38 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/b7ba91311abaf1af4d97822e5c8eccc53b1e11fa

tdf#123864 a11y: Evaluate checkable/toggle flag for more toolbar items

It will be available in 24.8.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 25 Commit Notification 2023-12-19 21:34:02 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/a30f8ee1121aa2448be047f104a099b3272e6bde

tdf#123864 gtk3 a11y: Consider states when mapping BUTTON_DROPDOWN

It will be available in 24.8.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 26 Michael Weghorn 2023-12-19 21:35:09 UTC
This works as expected now for the gtk3 VCL plugin on Linux.
Comment 27 Commit Notification 2023-12-20 08:28:07 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-24-2":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/f098ba6579fb1992c0db86b19b22eb8532ab1ba6

tdf#123864 a11y: Handle new CHECKABLE state in misc places

It will be available in 24.2.0.0.beta2.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 28 Commit Notification 2023-12-20 16:10:15 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-24-2":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/2bd0e347f15c50f354386b775d681243a5dd52a8

tdf#123864 a11y: Handle new checkable state for VCLXAccessibleMenuItem

It will be available in 24.2.0.0.beta2.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 29 Commit Notification 2023-12-20 16:10:18 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-24-2":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/b88198c183dfb10c97409e83ea5ad7793811e7fb

tdf#123864 a11y: Evaluate checkable/toggle flag for more toolbar items

It will be available in 24.2.0.0.beta2.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 30 Commit Notification 2023-12-20 16:10:20 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-24-2":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/e8d18c73dbbf8cfcd972072510985d6bd18b2cca

tdf#123864 gtk3 a11y: Consider states when mapping BUTTON_DROPDOWN

It will be available in 24.2.0.0.beta2.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 31 Michael Weghorn 2024-04-16 15:47:15 UTC
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #14)
> At 5.3 Windows and NVDA still do not report the attribute changes with any
> of the shortcut/accelerators. Maybe should, but they were consistent.

There's an NVDA issue for this NVDA/Windows case ( https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/4248 ), now also tracked in tdf#160695 for the LO side.