[HN Gopher] An accessibility update - GTK Development Blog
___________________________________________________________________
An accessibility update - GTK Development Blog
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-05-13 11:22 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.gtk.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.gtk.org)
| superkuh wrote:
| Wonderful news. This is a big step to filling one the gaps in the
| various waylands that prevented them from being taken seriously
| (none of the waylands were really ADA compliant before since they
| lacked any screenreader possibilities). I hope every wayland
| compositor choses to implement these two protocols in mutually
| compatible ways.
|
| As someone with progressive retinal tearing I'd been really
| worried the last 5 years or so with everything switching to one
| of the waylands and there being no accessibility. This is a
| relief. It'll probably get there before I go functionally blind.
| mhitza wrote:
| Are you using a screen reader on Linux? I tried Orca a few
| years back (wanting to test websites for accessibility with it)
| but it seemed to crash often.
| lukastyrychtr wrote:
| Definitely much better now, in a day-to-day usage I found a
| crash situation only once in this year. Note: I am a visually
| impaired Linux user and developer, I actually did the work on
| the shortcuts capturing API.
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| Coincidentally, there was an eye-opening thread on nearly this
| exact topic on /r/linux a few days ago:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1kkuafo/wayland_an_a...
|
| Definitely worth reading to understand what users are going
| through and where open source desktops are falling short.
| bobajeff wrote:
| I hope this is the start of AccessKit getting more attention from
| GUI toolkits going forward.
| rollcat wrote:
| I love this bit from TFA:
|
| > Is this system usable for _me_ ?
|
| > Accessibility is about making our software usable (and,
| ideally, pleasant to use) for as many people as we can.
|
| Exactly. I don't have any disabilities to speak of (less-than-
| perfect eyesight, mild case of wrist pain), but I enjoy using
| many accessibility features, such as:
|
| - Automatic dark/light mode; yes I do use a light theme in my
| editor during the day ;)
|
| - High contrast (Gnome); I wish macOS could do something sane
| here
|
| - Reduce motion & transparency (Mac, iPhone); I really wish CSS
| prefers-reduced-* was already widely deployed
|
| - Grayscale color filter (mild setting; iPhone)
|
| - Dim flashing lights (Mac)
|
| - Shortcat.app (looking forward to Gtk apps on Mac supporting
| this)
|
| - On-screen keyboard, for using a Real Computer from a couch. A
| basic wireless mouse beats every single clunky TvBox remote out
| there.
|
| - Games! Aim assist, highlight ally/enemy, reduce bobbing /
| motion, etc
|
| Accessibility is for everyone.
| growlNark wrote:
| I'm sure we can all appreciate not climbing 30 flights of
| stairs, even if it we are physically capable of it.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > I'm sure we can all appreciate not climbing 30 flights of
| stairs, even if it we are physically capable of it.
|
| Totally. And people seem to forget that you can temporarily
| go from "no disabilities" to "have a disability" to "no
| disabilities" very quickly. Slip of a knife while cooking can
| take a hand out of commission for a few days. Stepping on
| your glasses can make you visually-impaired for a few days.
| Ear infection can seriously affect your hearing until it's
| healed.
|
| And there's tech issues that can come up too! A couple of
| weeks ago I needed to get an embedded Linux device set up
| with SSH and could only find a spare mouse in the office, no
| random USB keyboards kicking around. Trying to use the Gnome
| on-screen keyboard was an exercise in frustration. Some
| symbols were missing that I needed to type into a shell, for
| example.
| Robdel12 wrote:
| This is awesome! I'm really excited about this since this is the
| underpinning of Zed. I figured out quickly when replicating
| ChatGPTs macOS apps "work with" feature that Zed had zero
| accessibility tree.
|
| Great news, just in time Global Accessibility Awareness Day
| tomorrow (May 15th)
|
| Edit: I'm totally wrong about Zed using GTK. They built their
| own: https://www.gpui.rs/ Still a win for all GTK apps!
| tarboreus wrote:
| Someone's been writing a great series on accessibility for the
| blind in Linux
|
| https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...
| akdor1154 wrote:
| Great to read - where are we up to with regards to the long
| laundry list that voice control software like Talon needs?
|
| It's interesting - if you're going to allow third-party a11y
| software to control your PC, you need a 'make my wayland
| compositor do stuff' API.
|
| However, Wayland's intention to explicitly avoid baking specific
| desktop concepts onto its core protocols make this somewhat of a
| conflicting design req.
|
| Ref: https://github.com/splondike/wayland-accessibility-
| notes/blo...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-14 23:01 UTC)