On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 12:46 AM kendell clark <coffeekingms@gmail.com> wrote:
just curious. What changed in gnome 3.16 to make status icons
inaccessible? In gnome 3.14, the message tray was never inaccessible.

Status icons were decoupled from notifications, and the message tray was removed altogether, as well as the items that grouped notifications (usually by application). The latter was what provided accessible-name/event handling for status icons,  not the icons themselves - so when the icons were moved, I overlooked the missing accessibility features that used to be provided by the removed bits.

 
Some of the icons wouldn't let me access their pop up menu but they
all corresponded with their application. EG pidgin internet messenger,
vlc media player, etc. Is this still the case with the icons being
moved to the bottom left of the screen?

Yes, with the patches from the aforementioned bug.  It is still up to the application providing the icon to handle keyboard events, but at least almost all icons should have a name.