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While I have no objection to the LO community ensuring accessibility with outdated versions of Orca, it might be worth testing to see if the problem has already been fixed though a change in Orca.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

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

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

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

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?

(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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Still reproducible with current master (as of 5f15f953f34eef1e165af4f935fab6533fd49bc6) and orca 48.1-1 in Debian testing.

state-changed:focused events are apparently sent, but ignored by Orca due to some issue with the top-level window not having the active state.
Might be worth checking whether one of one of ("popup", "application window") is considered the top-level while the other one has the active state set, or the state is missing altogether.

From Orca debug log:

16:01:07.394919 - EVENT MANAGER: Dequeueing object:state-changed:focused for [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN'] in soffice (gtk 3.24.49) (1, 0, 0)
16:01:07.394947 - EVENT MANAGER: Dequeued object:state-changed:focused for [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN'] in soffice (gtk 3.24.49) (1, 0, 0) priority: 3, counter: 524

vvvvv START PRIORITY-3 OBJECT EVENT OBJECT:STATE-CHANGED:FOCUSED (queue size: 19) vvvvv
16:01:07.395306 - AXObject: Treating soffice as not supporting collection.
16:01:07.395627 - EVENT SOURCE:
                  app='soffice (gtk 3.24.49)' name='YEN SIGN' role='drawing area' id='favchar2'
                  description=''
                  help=''
                  states='enabled, focusable, focused, has-tooltip, sensitive, showing, visible'
                  relations=''
                  actions=''
                  interfaces='Component'
                  attributes='toolkit:gtk'
                  text=''
                  path=[-1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 43, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 14]
                  
16:01:07.395640 - SCRIPT MANAGER: Active script is: soffice (module=orca.scripts.apps.soffice.script)
16:01:07.395653 - FOCUS MANAGER: Locus of focus is [drawing area: 'EURO SIGN']
16:01:07.395673 - EVENT MANAGER: Getting script for event for [application: 'soffice'] [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN']
16:01:07.395686 - SCRIPT MANAGER: Getting script for [application: 'soffice'] [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN']
16:01:07.395704 - SCRIPT MANAGER: Script is app script soffice (module=orca.scripts.apps.soffice.script)
16:01:07.395713 - EVENT MANAGER: Script for event is soffice (module=orca.scripts.apps.soffice.script)
16:01:07.395730 - EVENT MANAGER: Processing object:state-changed:focused: script for event is active
16:01:07.395744 - FOCUS MANAGER: Locus of focus is [drawing area: 'EURO SIGN']
16:01:07.395755 - TABLE NAVIGATOR: Last navigation event (None) was last key event: False
16:01:07.395778 - AXUtilitiesRelation: [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN'] flows from: []
16:01:07.395791 - AXUtilitiesRelation: [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN'] flows to: []
16:01:07.396081 - SCRIPT UTILITIES: [frame: 'Untitled 1 — LibreOfficeDev Writer 26.2 [5f15f953f34eef1e165af4f935fab6533fd49bc6]'] is top-level object for: [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN']
16:01:07.396335 - SCRIPT UTILITIES: [drawing area: 'YEN SIGN'] is in frame [frame: 'Untitled 1 — LibreOfficeDev Writer 26.2 [5f15f953f34eef1e165af4f935fab6533fd49bc6]'] and dialog None
16:01:07.396355 - AXObject: Clearing AT-SPI cache on [frame: 'Untitled 1 — LibreOfficeDev Writer 26.2 [5f15f953f34eef1e165af4f935fab6533fd49bc6]'] Recursive: False. Reason: Checking if window can be the active window
16:01:07.396550 - AXUtilities: [frame: 'Untitled 1 — LibreOfficeDev Writer 26.2 [5f15f953f34eef1e165af4f935fab6533fd49bc6]'] from [application: 'soffice'] lacks active state
TOTAL PROCESSING TIME: 0.0016
^^^^^ FINISHED PRIORITY-3 OBJECT EVENT OBJECT:STATE-CHANGED:FOCUSED ^^^^^

(In reply to Michael Weghorn from comment #12)
> state-changed:focused events are apparently sent, but ignored by Orca due to
> some issue with the top-level window not having the active state.

Indeed. This quick hack in Orca (on top of main as of 36c65394e0ec085175c5a45341f89527084cf068) to drop that check makes it announce the popup + focus changes in there:

diff --git a/src/orca/ax_utilities.py b/src/orca/ax_utilities.py
index 98a738037..f01ada61c 100644
--- a/src/orca/ax_utilities.py
+++ b/src/orca/ax_utilities.py
@@ -121,10 +121,10 @@ class AXUtilities:
         app = AXUtilitiesApplication.get_application(window)
         tokens = ["AXUtilities:", window, "from", app]
 
-        if not AXUtilitiesState.is_active(window):
-            tokens.append("lacks active state")
-            debug.print_tokens(debug.LEVEL_INFO, tokens, True)
-            return False
+        #if not AXUtilitiesState.is_active(window):
+        #    #tokens.append("lacks active state")
+        #    debug.print_tokens(debug.LEVEL_INFO, tokens, True)
+        #    return False
 
         if not AXUtilitiesState.is_showing(window):
             tokens.append("lacks showing state")