Snaps no longer work with Orca on Ubuntu 21.04 or 21.10

Tobias10124 · 11-30-2021, 02:27 PM

I am running Ubuntu 21.10 on this Acer Aspire A315-51 laptop, and am a blinder user. I use Orca screen reader which works beautifully. However, there is one problem. Snaps. I try to run, say, the Discord snap, and it won't be accessible, even with the --force-renderer-accessibility option passed to it. In addition, when running from a terminal, I get the error, couldn't connect accessibility bus. I heard that this may have something to do with a utility called Dbus, but I'm not really sure how I can solve this. I'd like to be able to use snaps because I wouldn't say I'm the most technical LINUX user and don't really fancy having to download a new deb every single time there's an update.

shruggy · 12-01-2021, 04:05 AM

There's a short thread on ubuntu-accessibility mailing list about this. Unfortunately, it didn't get any answers from Ubuntu developers. And a longer thread on orca-list. No solution there either.

Could it be related to LP#1923052 as well? The bug is not about snaps, it's about Ubuntu installer, but still.

As for snaps, I'd recommend you to review Handling interfaces and permissions in your snaps. Sorry, I cannot give you anything more definitive as I'm using neither Orca nor snaps.

dbus is listed among interfaces supported by snaps. I'd expect Orca to communicate with snaps via desktop-legacy (which is enabled by default) rather than via D-Bus interface, but who knows?

BTW, the Discord page on snapcraft suggests running

Code:

sudo snap connect discord:system-observe

in order to enable all Discord features.

And here are all plugs of the Discord snap that could be connected:

Code:

audio-playback
audio-record
browser-support
camera
home
mount-observe
network
network-observe
opengl
process-control
pulseaudio
removable-media
screen-inhibit-control
system-observe
unity7

To list all connected and unconnected plugs of the Discord snap installed on your system, run

Code:

snap connections discord

Another possiblility is to reinstall a snap in classic mode, thus completely disabling its security confinement:

Code:

sudo snap remove discord
sudo snap install --classic discord