An accessibility update – GTK Development Blog

Summary

I recently saw somebody ask Is Fedora accessible now ? To which I want to say: yes! But this question does not really have a simple yes-or-no answer. There is lots of nuance to it. A better question would be: Is this system usable for *me* ? Accessibility is about making our software usable (and, ideally, pleasant to use) for as many people as we can. It has been a year since we last gave an update on accessibility (a11y) in and around GTK. Time to look at what has happened in this space since then. On the surface, it might seem that the answer is: not much. But lets look a bit closer. A new backend We merged the AccessKit a11y backend in GTK 4.18. This is pretty big news for GTK on platforms other than Linux. For the very first time, GTK applications can be accessible on Windows and macOS. This is also the first rust dependency in GTK. If you want to try it out, build GTK with the -Daccesskit=enabled build option, and set GTK_A11Y=accesskit in the environment. The AccessKit backend works on Linux as well, but we are still defaulting to at-spi here. If you are ever uncertain which a11y backend GTK is using, you can find this information in the inspector. The new backend was created by Matt Campbell as part the STF initiative. Keyboard shortcuts in orca One of the remaining gaps in the Wayland a11y support was the lack of support for the special keyboard shortcuts that are traditionally provided by the orca screen reader. Another result of the STF initiative was a prototype for a new a11y protocol, including support for these shortcuts, but it was not complete and unmerged. Thankfully, Lukáš Tyrychtr and Carlos Garnacho cooperated on extracting the relevant parts and completed the shortcuts support. This closes one of the biggest remaining “Wayland accessibility” gaps in GNOME 48. An accessible web browser Georges Basile Stavracas Neto put a lot of effort into making webkitgtk accessible, in particular when it is used in a flatpak sandbox. You can watch his GUADEC ta...