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

[Michael Stahl]

On 09.06.22 11:21, Michael Weghorn wrote:
> I suppose that supporting new UIA concepts/features in addition would 
> probably require more fundamental changes than "just" adding a new 
> wrapper/bridge for UIA around existing LO a11y interfaces (either a 
> custom one, or using Gtk/Qt).
> But I'm not an expert and have only little experience with a11y so far 
> and not looked into UIA any closer, so all of the above would need 
> deeper knowledge/further investigation for a more reliable statement.
> 
> Unless there are resources to work on UIA specifically, I tend to think 
> it would make sense to focus on improving the existing 
> IAccessible2-based implementation ("winaccessibility") (and fixing 
> issues that are not platform-specific) for now if that's (still) 
> sufficiently supported by AT in practice, and reconsider what to do 
> about UIA at some later point in time (at which there might also be news 
> on the state of gtk4 and qt5/qt6 a11y).

i tend to agree, one aspect of this is that AFAIK the AT-SPI and 
IAccessible2 APIs that concern document content were designed 
specifically with OOo's document models in mind - there might be a 
bigger impedance mismatch to other A11y APIs, needing more code in the 
"translation layer".

but i don't know any details about UIA.