Application Launcher Accessibility

[Richard Hyman]

Morning Team,

Hoping you’re well.

The recent steps taken to make Plasma 6 an accessible desktop environment made it a no-brainer to switch all 4 of my personal and business linux machines to daily driving Plasma.

Orca having undergone a renovation I’m unsure whether this was down to them or you, but recently the application launcher has begun slipping into being less accessible.

Application descriptions are announced through orca, names are not. This makes it incredibly cumbersome to use if you don’t know the exact name of the application you’re looking for. Please can this be fixed?

More than happy to dedicate some time to testing out any fixes prior to committing them.

Does plasma have a process for ongoing testing of accessibility integration of the UI?

Also, given orca is struggling to stay accessible on its own desktop environment, would plasma be in a position to build a better screen reader if you guys could find the funding? One whose codebase doesn’t look like it predates the Saturn V, and which uses far more appealing voice options than espeak?

Looking forward to hearing from you,

All the best,

Richard Hyman
Lead Director – Accessibility Online