Bug#1099751: orca: Orca captures all input when focus changes to firefox

Sebastian Humenda shumenda at gmx.de
Fri Mar 7 14:41:25 GMT 2025


Package: orca
Version: 47.3-1
Severity: grave
Tags: a11y
Justification: renders package unusable

Hi

When the focus is set to Firefox, the "browse" mode is activated and seemingly
captures all key presses. Navigating the web site works, but any "normal"
action doesn't. This includes "Tab" in focus mode, but also pressing ctl+l to
jump to the address bar, pressing f10 to open the menu bar or alt+tab to get
out of Firefox.

This applies to the current packages in Trixie/testing.
I can confirm this on two testing machines, independently upgraded from
Bookworm, one at ~2024-10 and the other at ~2025-02.
I'm using X.org and the MATE desktop. I've attached a debug log captured with
the following steps:

1.  Start `orca --debug`.
2.  Spawn firefox from a mate-terminal with the address of `orca.gnome.org`.
3.  Try to escape Firefox with Alt+Tab or access the address bar with ctl+l.
    Both in browse and in focus mode.

It is possible that the bug isn't in Orca itself but in AT-SPI or somewhere in
X.org. Normal desktop use seems not to be affected. Given the importance of
web services these days, this still renders the system unusable for a
considerable number of blind users.

Cheers
Sebastian
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.9
  APT prefers stable-security
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-31-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages orca depends on:
ii  gir1.2-glib-2.0            1.74.0-3
ii  gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0       1.22.0-2+deb12u1
ii  gir1.2-gtk-3.0             3.24.38-2~deb12u3
ii  gir1.2-pango-1.0           1.50.12+ds-1
ii  gir1.2-wnck-3.0            43.0-3
ii  gsettings-desktop-schemas  43.0-1
ii  gstreamer1.0-plugins-good  1.22.0-5+deb12u2
ii  python3                    3.11.2-1+b1
ii  python3-brlapi             6.5-7+deb12u1
ii  python3-cairo              1.20.1-5+b1
ii  python3-gi                 3.42.2-3+b1
ii  python3-louis              3.24.0-1
ii  python3-pyatspi            2.46.0-2
ii  python3-speechd            0.11.4-2
ii  speech-dispatcher          0.11.4-2
ii  xkbset                     0.6-3

Versions of packages orca recommends:
ii  xbrlapi  6.5-7+deb12u1

Versions of packages orca suggests:
ii  brltty  6.7-1~bpo12+1

-- no debconf information
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: debug-2025-03-06-11:46:13.out.gz
Type: application/gzip
Size: 93254 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-a11y-devel/attachments/20250307/4e30e041/attachment-0001.gz>


More information about the Pkg-a11y-devel mailing list