[libreoffice-accessibility] Re: ESC meeting minutes: 2022-05-26 [IAccessible2 support in JAWS]

[Michael Weghorn]

Hi Marco,

On 08/06/2022 13.09, Marco Zehe wrote:
> JAWS does support IAccessible2, but only if it needs to, like in Firefox, and some parts of Chromium-based browsers. However, with the UI Automation implementation for the latter becoming stronger, there might be a time when JAWS moves to UIA for web content support in Chromium browsers. But you never know what plans Vispero actually has for which version of JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion. All I notice is that, with Windows 11 having an even stronger UIA implementation than 10, more things are being done through that interface rather than traditional MSAA or IAccessible2 channels where possible. And as has been said elsewhere, UIA properties and events are even very accessible from within the JAWS scripting language, which makes this even more compelling because the end user experience can be customized further. As IAccessible2 is an extension of MSAA, and MSAA is largely deprecated by Microsoft, it will probably never get the same treatment.

thanks a lot for that valuable input.

I have added a new sub-section for adding UIA support to the wiki page ( 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Under-loved_areas#UIA_support_on_Windows 
), mostly based on the above and more information from your other email 
about announcing slide content in Impress presentation mode ( 
https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/accessibility/msg01007.html ).

A probably rather crazy thought I once had was whether it would be a 
good idea to try to get rid of our custom a11y bridge on Windows in the 
long run after all, e.g. by switching to Gtk or Qt there as well (at 
least as one option). But that would certainly have to make sense not 
only from the a11y perspective but the UI as a whole and would probably 
be rather contentious.

(I have close to zero knowledge about Windows-specific bits in LO 
besides winaccessibility, so don't know whether there would be any value 
in even spending any time in looking into this any further at some point 
in time. And as of now, neither the gtk4 nor the qt5/qt6 VCL plugins in 
LO have proper a11y anyway, and the Gtk 4 library presumably doesn't 
have any a11y implementation for Windows yet either, even though the new 
a11y architecture [1] in Gtk 4 should allow for one to be added at some 
stage.)

Michael

[1] https://blog.gtk.org/2020/10/21/accessibility-in-gtk-4/