Steps to reproduce:

Using Orca master, I am on Debian Buster but other users answered me they observed the same on other distros:

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+B to open address book
2. Switch to navigation mode
3. Press Ctrl+Home to go to the top of the page then press down arrow to be on New address book
4. Try to activate the menu
   I tried Space, enter, right-click using Orca gesture, down arrow and Alt+Down arrow with no success

Actual results:

In some case pressing space activate focus mode but nothing happens, in my case sometimes it opens the search edit field.
Pressing Enter do nothing.
Using the Orca gesture to right click open the dialog to add a new address book but does not offer for example the ability to create a Cardav address book
Pressing Down arrow or Alt+Down arrow does nothing

Expected results:

Using a screen reader on Linux, we should also be able to interact with this menu as it is the case on Windows using NVDA for example and choose to create a classic address book, a cardav address book or a LDAP one.

Patrick, following my QA/advocacy, we have just fixed this problem in bug 1751282 by making all of address book's main toolbar buttons focusable.

I'm not sure this is a full duplicate of bug 1751282.

Based on what Patrick wrote:

Press Ctrl+Home to go to the top of the page then press down arrow to be on New address book
The focus was actually moved on the button? Can you confirm this?
Before bug 1751282 those buttons weren't keyboard accessible (sorry), but I'm not sure if Orca's navigation mode is able to overcome that.

Pressing Down arrow or Alt+Down arrow does nothing

Pressing Alt+Down on the first button should open the menupopup if the focus is actually on the button.

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #2)

The focus was actually moved on the button? Can you confirm this?
Before bug 1751282 those buttons weren't keyboard accessible (sorry), but I'm not sure if Orca's navigation mode is able to overcome that.

Orca's navigation mode does not overcome what is focusable using Tab and Shift+Tab, it allows to navigate using arrows in all the interface.
So if the button is not focusable at all, I don't think the focus was moved to the button.

All right, thanks for confirming.
So yes, this issue should have been solved by bug 1751282, and Thomas' original assessment on the bug being a duplicate is correct.
We're uplifting the fix to 102 and it should be available in a few weeks.

Unfortunately, even if I can focus the New address book button, I cannot interact with this and select the type of address book I want to create.
Pressing Space, enter, down arrow or Alt+down arrow has no effect at all.

After more test, I can now interact with the New address book menu but have to guess it is open.

• Pressing space do nothing, why not even if it is announced has a button and a menu
• Pressing down arrow do nothing
• Alt+down arrow opens the menu but Orca does not announce the menu is open, but when pressing up/down arrow we can choose which type of address book we want to create.

When I tried for the first time I did not think to press down arrow after Alt+Down arrow because I had no speech feedback to announce the menu was open.
In braille nothing also changed, it is the same as staying on the button without pressing anything.

I tried with Orca master.

I had the confirmation this behavior is on Orca side so all is OK for Thunderbird.

Thanks for the quick resolution!