SUMMARY When I activate the screen reader with Meta+Alt+S, Orca starts up but does not read the open Plasma Welcome Center window. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Download the Fedora 41 KDE RC ISO 2. Boot it 3. Activate screen reader with Meta+Alt+S OBSERVED RESULT After "Screen reader on" is said, nothing is read. EXPECTED RESULT After "Screen reader on" is said, Plasma Welcome should be read to you saying "Welcome to Fedora" and some such. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: Fedora Linux 41 (KDE Plasma) KDE Plasma Version: 6.2.1 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.7.0 Qt Version: 6.7.2 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION This is being considered a blocker bug downstream in Fedora.
Some additional testing reveals some interesting details: * The autolaunched welcome can't be read, but if I quit it and reload it, then it can be read. This potentially suggests a race? * It seems to not get read unless I double-press + on the number pad (and this doesn't work if you don't have a number pad) Once I force Orca to read it, it does seem to do the job. But this is unexpected behavior, as it should be read as soon as the screen reader is invoked and shouldn't require a weird shortcut to make it read it.
This may be partly or completely resolved by https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtbase/+/598549 by aleasto.
The mentioned Qt changeset doesn't address the "need magic keys to make orca read the application" issue.
well, in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=495102 the same magic key combo worked - so maybe there are just two issues here? the one addressed by https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtbase/+/598549 , and the 'why do i need to press a magic key combo to get some things read' issue?
https://a11ysupport.io/learn/at/orca documents "Key Pad Plus" as "start reading from current position"...
I wonder if changing "X-KDE-Kded-phase" in the KDED module from 1 to 2 would help. If it does, we could change it.
(In reply to Oliver Beard from comment #6) > I wonder if changing "X-KDE-Kded-phase" in the KDED module from 1 to 2 would > help. If it does, we could change it. What is this?
(In reply to Neal Gompa from comment #7) > (In reply to Oliver Beard from comment #6) > What is this? https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-welcome/-/blob/master/src/kded/kded_plasma-welcome.json?ref_type=heads#L95 Changing it from 1 to 2 would make Welcome Center start later in Plasma's startup. I could conceive that here it might make a difference, but when initially choosing this value I thought earlier would be better. You'd have to change it in the source and recompile to test. It might be possible to alter the compiled binary (/usr/lib/qt6/plugins/kf6/kded/kded_plasma-welcome.so) but not trivial (I can use Okteta to find "X-KDE-Kded-phase", followed by the byte 0x1). I can't guarantee this would work though, as that copy of the value might not be used.
> Changing it from 1 to 2 would make Welcome Center start later in Plasma's startup. I could conceive that here it might make a difference You can reproduce plasma-welcome not reading the page contents starting it whenever, with `/usr/bin/plasma-welcome`. The other thing is a Qt bug as said in the comments above.
Later should be fine anyway; Welcome Center's launch is not time sensitive.
I just gave this a try today, and the screen reader reads everything in the app now. Looks like this has been fixed for Plasma 6.5.0 or earlier.