Re: Making TK accessible?

  • From: Jamal Mazrui <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 03:57:56 -0500

My understanding is that GTK+ is native controls under Linux/GNOME. The code has then been ported to other platforms but the accessibility API is only present under GNOME. GTK+ is not accessible under Windows because of lack of MSAA.


Jamal


On 1/29/2011 12:25 AM, Ken Perry wrote:
Jamal is gtk custom controls or just like wx widgets?

ken

-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamal Mazrui
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 10:55 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Littlefield, Tyler
Subject: Re: Making TK accessible?

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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