KDE-accessibility/Qt AT-SPI

[Jeremy Whiting <jeremy scitools com>]

Hello,

I've recently become aware of some shortcomings in KDE-accessibility project 
(or possibly only percieved shortcomings).  I'm very curious as to the state 
of Qt/KDE with regard to their ability to work with screen reader programs 
such as Orca.  Note that I'm not blind, have not used Orca as of yet, but as a 
KDE developer I'm worried that we are not quite as supportive of accessibility 
as we should be and/or used to be. Gunnar posted some specs for how to use ATK 
and/or AT-SPI to the kde accessibility website, but that was years ago.[1] Qt 
also supposedly has accessibility support in Qt 4 [2] but without going to AT-
SPI I've no clue what good it does, i.e. what interfaces it provides and how 
screen readers such as Orca can use it.

From what little research I have done it appears that there is work going on 
to make an AT-SPI to DBus bridge, which is not yet completed from what I 
gather.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, my aim is to start a 
discussion and get some things started or at the very least understand some 
more about this.

I also noticed that on the Orca site, and all gnome accessibility sites I have 
found Qt/KDE is mentioned as not providing the accessible interface necessary 
for screen readers to work with our apps.   I'd like to know if this is true, 
and also how to remedy this.  I'll be installing/trying Orca soon to get a 
feel for how it works, and what it does exactly, etc. and so I'll be able to 
test it with KDE/Qt apps.

thanks,

Jeremy Whiting

P.S. I am subscribed to both cc'ed lists and will join any others as needed.

[1] http://accessibility.kde.org/developer/atk.php
[2] http://doc.trolltech.com/4.5/qt4-accessibility.html