Re: A Terible Problem with accessibility of Gnome

Jason White via gnome-accessibility-list <[email protected]> Sat, 29 May 2021 15:21:19 -0400
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnome.accessibility.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 29/5/21 4:29 am, Rynhardt Kruger via gnome-accessibility-list wrote:
> I definitely think image recognition has improved a lot, both in speed
> and accuracy. However, even a difference like 50 milliseconds may be
> noticeable by an experienced screen reader user, especially if one
> uses speech at 400 words per minute or more.

A further difficulty is that any system relying on image recognition 
imposes the burden of errors on the user, whose ability to correct for 
them is limited.

Image recognition might be useful, however, in automatically detecting 
errors in the implementation of accessibility APIs. I suppose that would 
be a research project.

My understanding is that the GNOME Foundation has accessibility plans 
which include a new accessibility API in GTK 4, guidance for developers, 
and, possibly, better tools for automatically detecting implementation 
errors.

I don't know whether GNOME developers also plan to fix the accessibility 
API and keyboard navigation of their own applications during the 
transition to GTK 4. Some proprietary operating system developers have 
been relatively successful in setting an accessibility policy for their 
software and implementing it reasonably consistently (e.g., Apple and 
Microsoft in recent years). So there are precedents that GNOME could 
surpass, given suitable project governance, developer education, and 
associated commitment of time and expertise. The GTK 4 initiative is an 
encouraging start.