[Kde-accessibility] focusing on accessibility

[Frederik Gladhorn]

Hi,
ok, let's move to the kde-accessibility mailing list too.

Onsdag 11. januar 2012 07.34.47 skrev Sebastian Sauer:
> On 01/10/2012 04:46 PM, Frederik Gladhorn wrote:
> > Initial suggestions for apps to get rocking with a11y were Kate and
> > KMail by the way.
> 
> Back then I added a QAccessibleInterface to Kate to implement focus
> tracking. I think what is needed to improve that is a
> consumer-application similar to what I started back then with
> KAccessible1. Also I would really like to add Konsole to that mix. imho
> it should have the highest priority among the consumer applications to
> get proper a11y done for Konsole.
> 
> In detail I would suggest in no particular order;
> 
> * QAccessible interface's for Konsole to implement focus tracking there.

Do you think we need a new interface in Qt or will the current text interfaces 
suffice? I have not spent any time thinking what it takes to make the shell 
accessible.
Checking with the gnome terminal, it seems to mostly implement the text 
interface which should not be a big deal.


> * Extend the Konsole and Kate QAccessibleInterface's as needed to expose
> marked/selected text (e.g. to a screenreader).

Yes.
 
> * Write KAccessible2 as successor of KAccessible1. The first version is
> based on QAccessible direct while what we like to have is a KDE-client
> that uses at-spi. Yes, an Orca "replacement" that would a) integrate
> into the desktop and b) make Gtk-applications accessible under KDE too
> and c) act as lib/daemon for consumers like the KWin Zoom plugin and
> KMagnifier.
> 
> More detailed KAccessible2 should implement following features;
> 1) focus-tracking
> 2) screen-reader
> 2b) keyboard-echo
> 3) display of the a11y "widget" hierarchy of an application and
> on-screen marking of the boundaries of selected "widgets" (note that in
> that context widget means a11y-object). That is useful cause it will on
> the one hand get the code in place to proper inspect applications and to
> navigate through them on the other hand.
> 4) braile
> 
> The first two points are done in KAccessible1. 2b, 3 and 4 are new features.

Lots of points there ;)
This I'm not so sure about.
The Gnome people are currently trying to untangle screen magnifier and orca. It 
should be separate IMHO, just working well together.

I wrote the basics for Qt based clients against at-spi dbus. It currently sits 
on my machine. I will have to clean that up at some point.
1) and 2) belong together into one imho. 2b) also.

3) currently we have accerciser as developer tool. It's not perfect but I 
don't think it's that important to get another tool like that at the moment. 
I'd rather see accerciser improved in a few places.

4) Yes, absolutely. I have no knowledge about braile. If anyone can help, step 
up. But in my opinion this is a next step after getting the basics in place.

 
> * Adapt focus-tracking in KMagnifier and the KWin Zoom plugins to use
> KAccessible2 rather then KAccessible1.

Hm, I would want a generic qt-at-spi-client lib that can be used for this, I 
think.

> > On 01/10/2012 12:25 AM, Frederik Gladhorn wrote:
> >> And we have great stuff such as Simon which is the awesome and just
> >> needs a bit of polish to make me want to use it for fun and coolnes
> >> despite being able to use mouse and keyboard.
> Simon should definitivly get some gsoc slots :)
> 
> >> For going all in: remember we will not have Plasma accessible any time
> >> soon. I'm currently working on QML a11y in Qt 5. While technically
> >> doable I don't see myself doing work on QGraphicsView in this area.
> * Add/Improve Plasma a11y. Focus on Panel, Desktop, Folderview, Kickoff,
> KRunner. That should be a good start.

Yes. Is anyone going to hack something up? I guess it would be possible, I 
don't have the time. Maybe you are right though and we can "fake" it 
circumventing graphicsview and just focusing on this part.

So who's going to do the work? I think these are all great plans and we are 
getting a clearer picture, but now we need someone to get their hands dirty ;)
I'd love to do some of these but I am busy fixing up Qt accessibility in 
general. I do want to help/mentor whoever feels like doing something very 
worthwile though ;) And of course Sebastian did great work, so I hope you 
continue with that.

Cheers
Frederik