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

[Marco Zehe]

Hi Michael,

yes, it is correct that IAccessible2 and ATK were both devised with the Open document format model in mind, with the implementation in Firefox following closely behind, introducing some web specific modifications into the specifications for both platforms. 

So, yes, as Michael W. suggested, for the near term, and probably some years to come, it is a good strategy to fix bugs in the IAccessible2 and ATK layers to get them up to speed. And as I said, even Impress can be made to work, at least with NVDA, by making sure to collaborate with the NVDA project so they support it when it is ready.

It is, however, a good strategy to also keep an eye on UIA, at least on the side, and also watch what Mozilla do with Firefox in the longer term with regards to an UIA implementation. Just to not get hit out of the blue with suddenly IAccessible2 support twindling within assistive technologies because everyone else has moved to UIA.

Marco


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Stahl <mst at libreoffice.org> 
Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 11:51 AM
To: Michael Weghorn <m.weghorn at posteo.de>; Marco Zehe <marco at marcozehe.de>; accessibility at global.libreoffice.org
Cc: libreoffice-qa at lists.freedesktop.org; libreoffice at lists.freedesktop.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] Re: ESC meeting minutes: 2022-05-26 [IAccessible2 support in JAWS]

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.