It is not realistic to make TK accessible in a cross-platform manner. TK uses custom controls so the same code can run on different platforms. As a result, the accessibility API of each platform is not incorporated in those controls. Technically, it would be possible to add the appropriate accessibility API for each platform, but that would be a tremendous amount of painstaking work and debugging over years to get right, so it is not going to happen.
wxWidgets, on the other hand, uses native controls of each platform. Those native controls are built by the platform developer, who also has incorporated its platform accessibility API into those controls. On Windows, it is common controls with MSAA. On Linux, it is GTK+ controls with ATSPI.
Thus, Python would, indeed, be more accessible to all if it used wxWidgets rather than TK for its GUI library. For historical or political reasons, however, that will probably not happen, e.g., because of the pushback from QT or Fox GUI library communities that the Python board would rather not spend energy fighting. I think even Guido has acknowledged, however, that wxWidgets would be the best way to go if things were starting from now.
Jamal On 1/28/2011 1:11 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
I don't know if some of you remember Octavian, or if he's still on this list. To make a very very very long flame-filled thread shorter, he's basically screaming and yelling on the python list about discrimenation and TKInter not being accessible. Having not ran anything TK-like in Windows, I'm curious what the deal with this is. How could TK be mmade more accessible? His solution was to rip it out of the STDLib and replace it with WX, which won't end up happening for a few reasons, at least not any time soon. So, I want to try to talk to the TK folks, maybe jump in the trenches if I can and help code/make things more accessible. Can someone knowledgable about this give me some input on what needs to be done?
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