[libreoffice-accessibility] Re: ESC meeting minutes: 2022-05-26

[Michael Weghorn]

On 31/05/2022 16.24, Christophe Strobbe wrote:
> I don't have a comprehensive overview of LibreOffice UI accessibility either, unfortunately. However, if you are looking for ways to prioritise issues, one way may be based on the accessibility requirements in the ETSI standard EN 301 549, which defines the requirements that software, documents and a number of other IT products will need to fulfil in the EU starting June 2025. If you want the biggest bang for your buck, my recommendations are the following: 
> (1) With regard to the UI, focus on Windows-based accessibility issues first, since that is where (a) the majority of people with disabilities are and (b) the version that is most likely to get audited if accessibility audits get done. (As a Linux user, I would also like GTK-related to get fixed, but I am not representative of the market.) With regard to applications, I would focus on Writer before Impress or Calc. (I don't know how often Base and Draw are used in professional contexts, if at all.)

Thanks, Christophe, that's really helpful.

I generally agree with the priorities.
(FWIW, looking at, comparing and working a bit on the a11y 
implementations of all of Windows/gtk3/qt has proven to be very useful 
to me to get a deeper overall understanding, though.)

One other aspect that came to my mind:

For Windows, we currently support IAccessible2, but not UIA.
That's fine for NVDA, but I have heard/read at times that other screen 
readers/AT rely more on UIA. (But I haven't done any further research so 
far.)
Does anybody know more about this and whether it would actually be 
necessary to implement native UIA support in LO for those AT to properly 
interact with LO?
(Or is it more about having proper plugins/app modules/scripts for LO 
for the single AT, since e.g. NVDA and JAWS appear to rely heavily on 
those to properly support specific apps?)