[Kde-accessibility] Re: accessibility problem for visual impairment

[Sebastian Sauer]

Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 1:32 PM, Sebastian Sauer <mail at dipe.org> wrote:
>> Actually all Qt and KDE widgets are fully accessible already. For that Qt
>> uses the cross-platform QAccessibility-framework. Custom widgets like
>> those drawn using QPainter are not accessible (e.g. kate implements
>> kateviewaccessible.h to make it's canvas accessible - I would have added
>> a link to the file but seems all the KDE-restructure resulted in me not
>> being able to find kdebase any longer, grrrr).
> 
> Is that new?  I'd heard as recently as 6mo ago that it didn't spea
> at-spi on Linux at all, and then when I saw the qt4-at-spi package go
> into Kubuntu 11.04, I was told it was incomplete.

KAccessible isn't using atspi2 but QAccessible direct. Long story made short; 
After http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3777 failed (produced non-working code 
what was the result of big refactorings in atspi2). I decided that the topic 
is to important to risc not getting it done and started KAccessible.

So in fact we, that is KDE, has now ~2-3 horses running to get accessibility 
done. First what we had in KDE3, that seems to have been aborted since then, 
and second KAccessible and theird the Qt-atspi2-bridge.

The ideal solution would be to get the Qt-atspi2 bridge done. For a long time 
it was looking like that will never happen. This days that changed and we have 
fantastic coders working on that. So, I would assume that KDE 4.7 or 4.8 will 
finally ship with a proper integration into atspi2.

KAccessible has two advantages. First it works with very less code and second 
it works :) The big disadvantage is that only Qt/KDE-applications are using 
those QAccessible-infrastructure. GTK-applications are completly excluded at 
this point. But then back then I found it more important to get only Qt/KDE-
applications rather then only GTK-applications working on my desktop.

In any case KDE will benefit whatever happens on that front. KDE-developers 
will be able to use both, kaccessible and the Qt-atspi2 bridge, to improve  
a11y in there applications. Since both solutions are using QAccessible all 
work done on the applications will improve both solutions. Users will be able 
to choose whatever works best for them.

Also from the pov as a11y-tool developer, in that case a screenreader, and as 
someone who helped integrating a11y into the KDE-desktop, e.g. by adding 
focus-tracking to KWin's zoom-plugin, I am able to get things done without 
depending on the underlying (back then broken) infrastructure. We will see how 
the Qt-atspi2-bridge will progress. Once it's got enough I will probably just 
port KAccessible over or integrate atspi2 using those bridge. But till then we 
are able to provide working solutions to our users independent of the state of 
atspi2.

>> KDE 4.6 ships with kaccessible (located in the kdeaccessibility-module)
>> which has a screenreader included. Please give it a try and let us know
>> what needs to be improved.
> 
> OK, uh...how do I turn it on?  I installed it, and then I ran
> /usr/lib/kde4/libexec/kaccessibleapp and now there's an accessibility
> icon in my tray, and I clicked on it, and it has an "enable
> screenreader" checkbox, which I checked, and nothing happened.
 
Did you start speech-dispatcher ("/etc/init.d/speech-dispatcher start")? Also 
as sayed before I am very interested in feedback to improve KAccessible. 
Target here is to offer an integrated alternate to Orca and that's independent 
of the work done on QAccessible or the Qt-atspi2-bridge.