Bug 156699 - Special characters in toolbar group button not read by Orca
Summary: Special characters in toolbar group button not read by Orca
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.0.0.3 release
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard: target:24.2.0
Keywords: accessibility, bibisected, bisected, regression
Depends on:
Blocks: a11y, Accessibility Special-Character
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2023-08-09 14:14 UTC by Stéphane Guillou (stragu)
Modified: 2023-09-28 15:08 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Screenshot of the toolbar popup (61.21 KB, image/png)
2023-08-10 06:57 UTC, Michael Weghorn
Details

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Description Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-08-09 14:14:27 UTC
Steps:
1. Open Writer
2. Expand Special Character group button
3. Navigate characters with Tab or arrows

Results:
In 6.4, characters were read.
In 7.0, could not navigate anymore with the keyboard
In 7.1, could navigate with keyboard but characters weren't read anymore

Version: 7.1.0.3 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: f6099ecf3d29644b5008cc8f48f42f4a40986e4c
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Same in recent master build:

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 42364fbfafaa95773c073cc080142b64ec1786fb
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Using Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME 3.36.8 and Orca 3.36.2-1ubuntu1~20.04.2
Comment 1 Joanmarie Diggs 2023-08-09 15:07:29 UTC
Drive by comment:

* The upcoming stable version of Orca is 45.x
* Previous version: 44.x
* Previous version: 43.x
* Previous version: 42.x
* Previous version: 41.x
* Previous version: 40.x
* Previous version: 3.38.x
* Previous version: 3.36.x

There have been a ton of changes made over the years (plural) to Orca after the version you are testing with.

While I have no objection to the LO community ensuring accessibility with outdated versions of Orca, it might be worth testing to see if the problem has already been fixed though a change in Orca.

(P.S. I'm the Orca maintainer)
Comment 2 Julien Nabet 2023-08-09 20:14:08 UTC
Stéphane: I think it might be useful you upgrade Ubuntu to have more recent version of software like Orca.
There's also a ppa repo for Orca where you can download more recent Orca versions, see https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/orca
Comment 3 Michael Weghorn 2023-08-09 21:52:28 UTC
I can reproduce on Debian testing with Orca 44.1-2 and LO git master.

NVDA 2023.1 on Windows just says "option pane" for any character, which isn't much better.

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: d1d07992a89ba503f1d457a8f79926063f4d3f9c
CPU threads: 12; OS: Linux 6.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: d1d07992a89ba503f1d457a8f79926063f4d3f9c
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_DE); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 4 Milton 2023-08-10 06:50:36 UTC
I cannot confirm with Orca 44.2, Ubuntu 22.04, LO 7.5.5. After expand Special characters I can Arrow Down over 100 rows and Arrow Right to a character, Tab to the Insert button and press Enter. Most of the characters have no clear name to tell what they exactly are.
Version: 7.5.5.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 50(Build:2)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.2; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: nl-NL (nl_NL.UTF-8); UI: nl-NL
Ubuntu package version: 4:7.5.5~rc2-0ubuntu0.22.04.1~lo1
Calc: threaded
Comment 5 Michael Weghorn 2023-08-10 06:57:38 UTC
Created attachment 188894 [details]
Screenshot of the toolbar popup

(In reply to Milton from comment #4)
> I cannot confirm with Orca 44.2, Ubuntu 22.04, LO 7.5.5. After expand
> Special characters I can Arrow Down over 100 rows and Arrow Right to a
> character, Tab to the Insert button and press Enter. Most of the characters
> have no clear name to tell what they exactly are.

Are you talking about the special charactes *dialog* (which can be opened e.g. via "Insert" > "Special Characters" or selecting the "More Characters" button in the toolbar popup that this bug is about). I'm attaching a screenshot of the toolbar item that this is about. Are the characters right in there also announced for you when moving focus?
Comment 6 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-08-10 08:15:04 UTC
(In reply to Milton from comment #4)
> I cannot confirm with Orca 44.2, Ubuntu 22.04, LO 7.5.5. After expand
> Special characters I can Arrow Down over 100 rows and Arrow Right to a
> character, Tab to the Insert button and press Enter. Most of the characters
> have no clear name to tell what they exactly are.

Yes, looks like you used the dialog and not the toolbar dropdown.
I had noticed that issue with some characters being read out instead of being described (and therefore e.g. punctuation characters being ignored) but that should be handled in a different report.
Comment 7 Milton 2023-08-12 08:20:55 UTC
Yes you are right. I can through menu Insert > Special characters but not through the tool bar by pressing F6 twice and arrow right to Special characters.
Comment 8 Michael Weghorn 2023-08-17 07:57:57 UTC
The "Recent Characters" and "Favorite Characters" in the Special Characters *dialog* are also not announced, only those in the "table"/grid view above.

Pending Gerrit change to set the accessible name:
https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/155757

With this in place, both Orca and NVDA announce characters in the dialog. NVDA also announces the character in the toolbar popup, but Orca doesn't do so yet; that needs further analysis.
Comment 9 Commit Notification 2023-08-17 12:52:46 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/5b7d9f21ef74601f4893dd07e8e3f2bf34427eb0

tdf#156699 sfx2: Extract helper method to get char value + name

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 10 Commit Notification 2023-08-17 12:52:49 UTC
Michael Weghorn committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/8c4fa83191e6df5d823386cca2adc30dbbc9e297

tdf#156699 a11y: Set a11y name for SvxCharView

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 11 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-09-28 15:08:53 UTC
In case it is helpful to figure out a solution: bibisected with linux-64-7.0 repo to first bad commit 8091bc8471a23a54ddad81eb85f06a643aa6f54b which points to core commit:

commit 94c1f5cfb96a826220b64608cf0ada76d3bdde31
author	Caolán McNamara Mon Jan 13 09:14:39 2020 +0000
committer	Caolán McNamara 	Tue Jan 14 11:51:06 2020 +0100
rework SfxCharmapCtrl to be a PopupWindowController
Reviewed-on: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/86664

(In reply to Michael Weghorn from comment #8)
> [...] but Orca doesn't do
> so yet; that needs further analysis.

Confirmed that Orca still doesn't read them in:

Version: 24.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 2902ab24ecc5ffbf4907ea83b2028508b9de6364
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: es-MX (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded