Re: Accessibility for users with disabilities

[Matt Campbell]

I would happily serve as an advisor on such a Google Summer of Code 
project, though I'm probably too new to the GNUstep community to be the 
project mentor.  As I said before, I have expertise in MSAA, the 
accessibility API on Windows.  Given that it's now mid-March, is there 
any chance that GNUstep would be accepted for GSoC this summer?

Matt

On 3/18/2011 3:50 AM, Fred Kiefer wrote:
> This proposal sounds really interesting. I hadn't looked at the
> NSAccessibility protocol definition before, now after a quick glance I
> think it would be great to have it implemented. This is going to be a
> huge task, but could be addressed a bit at a time.
> I don't have the time to work on this myself, but am willing to help you
> integrate what ever code you come up with. This could also make up a
> good Google Summer of Code project.
>
>  From years back I remember a mail from a blind developer who wrote user
> interfaces with GNUstep.
>
> Fred
>
> On 16.03.2011 18:52, Matt Campbell wrote:
> > First a little introduction: I've been learning Cocoa for a project at
> > my job, and I decided to use GNUstep Renaissance for the UI, because I
> > find it much easier than drag-and-drop tools like Interface Builder. So
> > now I'm interested in playing with GNUstep itself; I think it would make
> > an excellent cross-platform GUI toolkit. But I've noticed one major
> > missing feature, which I wonder if anyone else has considered or started
> > to work on: accessibility for users with disabilities, particularly
> > users who are blind or visually impaired.
> >
> > As I see it, there are three major steps to implementing accessibility:
> >
> > 1. Add a definition of the NSAccessibility protocol and its related
> > constants from Cocoa.
> >
> > 2. Implement NSAccessibility in the standard controls (or more
> > accurately, in their cells). Strive to mimic the NSAccessibility
> > implementations of the respective cells in Cocoa.
> >
> > 3. Implement bridges from NSAccessibility to the native accessibility
> > APIs on the supported platforms. On Windows, the relevant APIs are
> > Microsoft Active Accessibility and IAccessible2. For X-based platforms,
> > I believe the relevant API is AT-SPI, though my knowledge of
> > accessibility in the modern X-based desktops is a bit out of date. This
> > will probably be the most complicated part; MSAA in particular is
> > notoriously hard to get right.
> >
> > Task 1 should be pretty straightforward, if tedious. Tasks 2 and 3 are
> > big and should probably happen in parallel.
> >
> > I don't currently have much time to contribute to such an effort, but I
> > can at least provide pointers in the right direction, particularly for
> > the MSAA/IA2 bridge. In any case, I thought I should at least point out
> > the need for this, particularly since accessibility isn't mentioned in
> > the development roadmap.
> >
> > Question: I've perused some of the Cocoa header files, including
> > NSAccessibility.h. Does that disqualify me from doing a clean-room
> > implementation for GNUstep?