Trouble with virtual keyboard: "No AT-SPI provider found on the system"

Paul Christopher · January 2, 2019

Dear armbian experts

For a kiosk-like system with a touch screen only, I need a virtual keyboard that pops up on demand and hides again when not needed.

I have installed successfully the onboard keyboard package, see https://launchpad.net/onboard.

The software has all the desired features and works fine so far. Only auto show / hide does not work, i. e. something seems to be wrong with the communication between onboard and other applications like Firefox etc.

I think, onboard needs for that an AT-SPI D-bus / AT-SPI registry installed to send and receive messages. I tried to activate "Applications -> Settings -> Accessibility -> Assistive Technologies -> Enable assistive technologies" but only got an error "No AT-SPI provider was found on your system".

I guess auto show / hide would work when an AT-SPI provider is installed?

If so: How can I install this AT-SPI provider / AT-SPI D-bus / AT-SPI registry and keep the running software parts to a minimum so as not to affect system performance too much? I really do not need braille support, speech output etc. but only the parts which enable intersoftware communication.

Thank you very much and keep up the brilliant work! Armbian is fantastic and a nice way for me to learn linux based systems. I also like the desktop styling / look and feel very much