Re: [orca-list] KDE Plasma Launcher "Kickoff" makes progress in accessibility

["Dan Miner" <dminer84 yahoo com>]

Yeah, I am not quite sure where that person is coming from either but I
suspect it might be lack of cross-platform accessibility I mentioned
earlier.  GTK is fairly usable under a properly configured Linux system but
on Windows and Mac -- impossible as there is no support for their native
accessibility APIs.  The promoted GUI toolkit by the masses is TkInter which
has no accessibility at all.  Tk-based GUIs are quick and generally easy to
construct, so I see the appeal.  That is why my goal is to make Tk
accessible.

On a brighter note, the upcoming GTK 4 is replacing atk and trying for a
real cross-platform accessibility framework.


-----Original Message-----
From: orca-list <orca-list-bounces gnome org> On Behalf Of Kyle via
orca-list
Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2020 9:00 AM
To: orca-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [orca-list] KDE Plasma Launcher "Kickoff" makes progress in
accessibility

Python not being fully compatible with GTK doesn't make sense to me either,
considering the Orca screen reader itself is written in Python. 
It not only interfaces well with at-spi2, but it also implements an
extensive GTK preferences window, and handles it quite well. Of course some
toolkits for use in any programming language need work. But Python itself
does have toolkits available that are working very well already, so
something not working well cannot be the fault of the underlying programming
language, but rather the fault of either the toolkit not implementing
accessibility correctly or a developer making custom widgets that don't
expose themselves to at-spi.


It has been my experience that it takes more effort to break things than it
does to make accessible applications. This seems to apply to just about
anything currently available. Sure there are toolkits that don't correctly
or fully implement accessibility to at-spi, but more often, I've found that
such problems are caused by added complexity that tends to break things,
when just using the toolkit as it was designed to be used will generally
result in a more accessible and even a cleaner application. For one thing,
complete custom widgets are largely unnecessary, as many toolkits do allow
their widgets to be customized and remain accessible to at-spi. So just
customize what is already available and working, instead of breaking things
by implementing fully custom widgets that don't expose themselves to the
accessibility stack. 
This alone would go a very long way toward better accessibility across the
board, both for applications and even for websites.

~Kyle

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