Re: [orca-list] IAccessible2 and Orca

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

On -10/01/37 20:59, Willie Walker wrote:
> [...]

> I've always liked the idea of a cross platform API, and I've mentioned 
> this for the past two decades I've worked in this space.  The reality, 
> however, is that it's going to take a while (if ever) to get there.  
> The problem is that there is already a significant investment in 
> supporting existing API's.  Asking everyone (AT vendors, toolkit 
> providers, application developers, etc.) to retool everything for a 
> common API is a difficult thing to swallow, as would be the idea of 
> spending years of design-by-committee time to get people to agree to 
> something.
As well as the issues you say, couldn't we end up with problems with 
trying to find common features all the way through, so ending up with 
some compromises on some platforms (eg. this would be like the problems 
discussed for cross-platform GUI toolkits, wx people complain that they 
can't get all the features available on linux, or the alternative if you 
use something like GTK it might not seem fully natural to windows users 
as some of the controls aren't quite like the native ones). 
Unfortunately I doubt we will ever get to a single accessibility API, 
probably similar but adapted for the specific platform APIs (as said 
about iaccessible2 and at-spi) is going to be what will be achievable.

For those who want to create cross-platform accessible apps, but only 
want to use one accessibility API then java swing and SWT seem about the 
only sensible option at the moment.

Anyway as this does not really fit in with an orca topic I will leave it 
here.

Michael Whapples

> Will