Comment 2 for bug 1227173

As I use Onboard as stabdard way to do text input in tablet (=touch-screen-only) mode the onscreen keyboard is not an accessibility feature but a facility for all users. This means that it should not require any special accessibility settings.

I start it with a script which gets triggered by the ACPI signal for the transition from laptop mode into tablet mode and kill it also by a script on the ACPI signal of switching from tablet mode to laptop mode.

See the ACPI config files, scripts, and how this all works in bug 1210823.

The command to start Onboard used by the script is

sudo -iu $user onboard &

$user is the user logged in to the desktop and also the variables DISPLAY and XAUTHORITY are set properly, so that the script which is running as root can open the keyboard on the user's display and running as the user.

I have configured Onboard to use auto-hide mode via the GUI configuration panel of Onboard.