Unity should have a screen magnifier

I have reproduced the same error on my system, also Ubuntu Lucid.

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

is that still an issue in Oneiric?

Yes, it is.

then somebody having the issue should send the bug to GNOME

I'm not convinced that this is a GNOME bug. First of all, it doesn't appear in other distributions (at least not in Fedora). Second, given the fairly radical changes that Ubuntu has made to the user interface in recent versions (e.g. Unity), I wouldn't be surprised if loss of Accessibility functionality was a side-effect. Maybe someone could take a look at it?

Comment #1 says it was already an issue in lucid which is using a not so patched GNOME 2.30, that doesn't seem related to Unity, would still need debugging by somebody who understands how accessibility tools are working (which seems to not be a lot of people there)

Ok, I just tried on a fresh Oneiric test installation from this week, assigned shift-Z to "toggle onscreen keyboard", then I pressed shift-Z and got onboard open on screen... I can't confirm the issue

the keys works fine in Oneiric, i.e the magnifier toggle turn on and off org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-magnifier-enabled in dconf-editor ... do you know what the magnifier does in GNOME2 or gnome-fallback in GNOME? I can see that gnome-shell has its own feature to do zooming but how did it work before gnome-shell?

Luke, do you know what the screen magnifier is supposed to do?

It's true that the toggle changes, but on my system the magnifier does not appear or in fact magnify.

right, did it used to work in GNOME2? something should magnify, gnome-shell does it not sure otherwise

There was a program named /usr/bin/magnifier in the gnome-mag package which allegedly provided magnification under GNOME2, but it wasn't started by Accessibility services correctly, and even if started manually, it still didn't work. In Oneiric, that package exists but is not installed by default and in any case isn't apparently used by Accessibility. I don't know what Ubuntu's solution to magnification is under Unity or Classic desktops in Oneiric.

The best solution for users of magnificatino in Oneiric is the COmpiz eZoom plugin, however it does not have focus tracking support, and does not magnify any parts of Unity, i.e the panel, dash, and laucner all stay the same size, whilst the rest of the user's desktop is magnified.

We don't have anything for users who do not have supported/working 3D hardware.

While the Compiz Zoom plugin might be appropriate for advanced users, modulo the significant caveats you mentioned, it requires manually configuring Compiz with ccsm, which is not installed by default, and which is beyond the capability of most users. It is therefore not an appropriately general solution for Ubuntu.

In any case, this bug is not about the lack of zoom functionality (which is a problem) but rather that the integration of zoom functionality with the desktop is broken.

Ok, since gnome-shell has a screen magnifier let's say it's an unity issue and it should have one as well

Sebastian, again, that's a different issue. Yes, Unity should have a magnifier, but until it does, it is a proper Bug (rather than a Wish) that a magnification feature is offered by the Accessibility manager but doesn't actually do anything. Users who depend on that feature will be very confused by the fact that a non-functional UI exists to enable magnification. The bug, then, is that the magnification UI in system settings should be removed or fixed.

That UI does what it's supposed to do, it updates the dconf settings, the issue is that nothing on the frontend side is reacting to the changes. What would you suggest doing? Hiding the actions on what logic? It seems a better fix to just make sure there is some magnifier picking up the actions and doing the work that to hide the option...

I can confirm the problem. One of my colleagues has worthening vision problems. Specialists send by the "sécurité sociale" speak of using ZoomText (http://www.aisquared.com/zoomtext/more/zoomtext_magnifier) which is a paying Windows only application...
Turning to my LUG, I've been sent to kwin zoom mode (kde), gnome3 accessibility zoom. But no solution for Unity. Well, my colleague will probably switch to another environment, but this should definitely be addressed (not to mention cases where such features must be compulsory to compete in some gov calls for tender).
My two cents...

Screen magnifier, visual alerts do not work on Ubuntu 13.04 x64 as well. Orca reader and On-Screen Keyboard do work. The same features work on Ubuntu Gnome 13.04 x64. So should be an issue with Unity not finding the right magnifying app when the option is turned ON under Accessibility Menu.

Dear Compiz Team,

Could you explain what changes have you made into Compiz to fix this issue ?
Is Unity 7 now usable with the EZoom module ?

Best regards.