Hi Marco,
On 08/06/2022 13.09, Marco Zehe wrote:
JAWS does support IAccessible2, but only if it needs to, like in Firefox, and
some parts of Chromium-based browsers. However, with the UI Automation
implementation for the latter becoming stronger, there might be a time when
JAWS moves to UIA for web content support in Chromium browsers. But you never
know what plans Vispero actually has for which version of JAWS, ZoomText, and
Fusion. All I notice is that, with Windows 11 having an even stronger UIA
implementation than 10, more things are being done through that interface
rather than traditional MSAA or IAccessible2 channels where possible. And as
has been said elsewhere, UIA properties and events are even very accessible
from within the JAWS scripting language, which makes this even more compelling
because the end user experience can be customized further. As IAccessible2 is
an extension of MSAA, and MSAA is largely deprecated by Microsoft, it will
probably never get the same treatment.
thanks a lot for that valuable input.
I have added a new sub-section for adding UIA support to the wiki page (
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Under-loved_areas#UIA_support_on_Windows
), mostly based on the above and more information from your other email
about announcing slide content in Impress presentation mode (
https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/accessibility/msg01007.html ).
A probably rather crazy thought I once had was whether it would be a
good idea to try to get rid of our custom a11y bridge on Windows in the
long run after all, e.g. by switching to Gtk or Qt there as well (at
least as one option). But that would certainly have to make sense not
only from the a11y perspective but the UI as a whole and would probably
be rather contentious.
(I have close to zero knowledge about Windows-specific bits in LO
besides winaccessibility, so don't know whether there would be any value
in even spending any time in looking into this any further at some point
in time. And as of now, neither the gtk4 nor the qt5/qt6 VCL plugins in
LO have proper a11y anyway, and the Gtk 4 library presumably doesn't
have any a11y implementation for Windows yet either, even though the new
a11y architecture [1] in Gtk 4 should allow for one to be added at some
stage.)
Michael
[1] https://blog.gtk.org/2020/10/21/accessibility-in-gtk-4/
