I have Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1 on my acer aspire es1-531 laptop. I noticed that despite all the other Fn+ keys are working, the screen brightness does not.
does it work when you run in terminal
xbacklight -10
or
xbacklight +10
but i asking about the keyboard, i can change the brightness in power manager but the keyboard(fn+left/right) is not working.
i tried to modify the grub acording to this http://anasismail.com/fixing-the-brightness-issue-on-ubuntu-16-04
but no results for me.
I mean if it works, it means you dont have a driver problem.
And you can add custom shortcuts in the settings menu to change your brighness