Re: [g-a-devel] Accessible cross-platform toolkit?

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Hi Marc:

> > I am looking for working cross-platform accessible GUI 
> > frameworks.  I've done some testing with not really good 
> > results, so I'd like to get your opinions in case I missed something:
> >
> >  1. GTK is cross-platform, but does it work with ATs on MS 
> > Windows too?
> >     AFAIK, it doesn't.  Are there any plans to fix this in a 
> > reasonable
> >     time frame?

I am not aware of any efforts to make GTK+ talk to MSAA.  It would
probably be best to bring this up on gtk-devel-list gnome org to
find out if there are plans in this area.

> >  2. wxWidget seems like the next alternative, but initial tests on
> >     Linux with a GTK backend showed that there seem to be 
> > several problems
> >     with accessibility.  Some widgets seem to be implemented 
> > as custom widgets
> >     and have no working accessibility support.  I am 
> > especially refering to the
> >     styledtextctrl widget, the counterpart of GTK's TextView 
> > widget.  Since I
> >     need something like TextView in my app, this is a real blocker...

wxWidgets does seem to support MSAA.  On UNIX, it uses GTK+, so
it supports some degree of accessibility out of the box.  However,
the custom widgets it uses are not accessible, nor does it provide
interfaces to set accessible labels, descriptions or relations.

We are also tracking these issues, and we submitted this bug report
against wxWidgets:

  http://trac.wxwidgets.org/ticket/9785

In other words, I think some work would be needed to make wxWidgets
fully accessible on UNIX.

> >  3. The last alternative I can think of is Java with Swing, but
> >     this effectively constrains me to a specific programming
> >     language, which isn't useful to me since I already have a 
> > codebase[1]
> >     that I'd like to continue working on (in Python).

I'd say Java is probably your best bet if you need accessibility
in UNIX and Windows.  I think it is the most mature in both.  You
could develop the user interface in Java, and perhaps use JINI to
talk with your backend Python code.

> > I'd really like to avoid having to maintain two different GUI 
> > frontends written for different toolkits.  While it might be 
> > possible to use wxWidget for the Windows case, and pygtk for 
> > Linux[2], I am afraid the maintainance overhead will be too 
> > much for a single blind developer.  While we are at it, 
> > MacOSX would be a nice addition in the list of target 
> > platforms, but I guess this is even more unrealistic right 
> > now, or am I wrong?
> > I hope I am :-)

I agree that a cross-platform accessible widget set is an
important feature.  However, I don't believe there is any
widget set that meets this need right now, aside from Java.
But perhaps someone else might have some further insights
or ideas.

Brian