Bug 787195

Summary:	Gtk applications inaccessible to a11y as "GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge" is not set
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Reporter:	Vitezslav Humpa <vhumpa>
Component:	at-spi	Assignee:	Matthias Clasen <mclasen>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	7.0	CC:	cmeadors, vbenes
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2012-05-23 09:44:15 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Vitezslav Humpa 2012-02-03 13:32:45 UTC

Description of problem:
GTK applications are not seen under the accessibility desktop root. Tried by dogtail's sniff tool as well as Orca. This is likely because GTK_MODULES environment variable is not set to 'gail:atk-bridge'. Running applications with this environment variable set makes them load these modules and subsequently they are accessible by at-spi. Exporting GTK_MODULES=gail:atk-bridge in /etc/profiles.d/ or setting it up in /etc/environment makes gtk3 to be accessible systemwide.

Thus the question is, whether these modules should not be enabled by default, at least by time of 'at-spi' install. In RHEL6.2 this is set up in gconf at /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/gtk-modules. This setting is also present in gconf in RHEL7 but doesn't seem to be honored (gconf->dconf change?). Setting the env variable directly makes a11y work again.

This is happening of course in Fedora as well.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
at-spi-1.32.0-6.el7.x86_64
gtk3-3.2.1-1.el7.x86_64
pyatspi-2.2.1-1.el7.noarch
Tested with orca and sniff from dogtail-0.8.0a2
(http://vhumpa.fedorapeople.org/dogtail/repo/dogtail/noarch/dogtail-0.8.0a2-1.fc16.noarch.rpm)

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have a clean RHEL7/Fedora16 install, if possible, or at least make a new user as otherwise some config may be used from your older home that has these modules enabled (if you used it with rhel6 or older Fedora)

2. Enable at-spi, using 'gnome-session-properties'

3. Try using Orca or run sniff.

Actual results:
Sniff will not show (gtk2/3) applications you have running and Orca wont respond on focusing them.

Expected results:
The opposite

Additional info:
Some applications were accessible anyway, notably Firefox as well Terminator. One would think that the issue was only with gtk3 apps, however e.g. pidgin is not accessible as well.

Comment 2 Vitezslav Humpa 2012-04-16 09:32:54 UTC

Looks like this a was a legacy issue for a11y apps that were still looking to enable at-spi toolkit accessibility out in gconf. Moving to dconf and setting 'org.gnome.desktop.interface.toolkit-accessibility' is a proper way and makes GTK3 apps load the a11y module even without the environment variable set. As the a11y applications are getting ported this should not be an issue for them.

Still - it would be nice if there was a way somewhere for user to enable this without having to rely on some application like Orca or Accessizer to do this for him. Please feel free to close this if you deem that the issue is resolved in this way.