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For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

blind.guru

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Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#21

Post by ktta »

oblio wrote: post #10
kuschku wrote: post #4

So, to recap, GTK doesn't work at all for accessibility, wxWidgets has issues with text entry, and Qt works, but only with NVDA, and not with text entry fields and JAWS. Now, Qt is an open project, so the question is: are there just no users interested in this who could implement it themselves? Most other functionality in toolkits was implemented like this.

These are the things that are super low priority for commercial projects, and those don't usually want to leave money on the table. They're super low priority for OSS. If I recall correctly Sun paid a long time ago for usability and accessibility studies for GTK 2 and Gnome 2. And I'd guess most of their work was thrown way during the transition to GTK 3/Gnome 3 (somebody can correct me on this, I'm not really certai…

The link is interesting. Looks like it checks for the HN's user logged in cookie and redirects to imgur.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#22

Post by jrochkind1 »

bjpbakker wrote: post #16

This article isn't anything more than a rant. The author filed a bug in the QT issue tracker [1] that some proprietary screen reader (JAWS, that his customers use) does not work well with QT on Windows. No (technical) details provided whatsoever. I don't believe anyone in the QT team is /against/ stronger support for accessibility. IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top p…

JAWS is a very popular screen-reader, not just "some proprietary screen-reader". Probably the most popular screen-reader, although it no longer has the market dominance it used to.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#23

Post by Brakenshire »

bjpbakker wrote: post #16

This article isn't anything more than a rant. The author filed a bug in the QT issue tracker [1] that some proprietary screen reader (JAWS, that his customers use) does not work well with QT on Windows. No (technical) details provided whatsoever. I don't believe anyone in the QT team is /against/ stronger support for accessibility. IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top p…

> IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top priority. I believe it's more appropriate for the author to rant against JAWS for not caring about QT, than the other way around.

Worth pointing out, JAWS is proprietary, but it is also very widely used. I'd imagine its user-base is many, many times that of NVDA (which is the open source equivalent).

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#24

Post by tinalumfoil »

mb720 wrote: post #15

I get that the author is frustrated with false claims about Qt, but calling people working on open source software "hippie coders" is just an insulting misrepresentation harming any rational debate.

I think ive read enough LKML to realize name calling doesn't slow software development and free software devs can handle being told off once in a while.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#25

Post by bjpbakker »

Brakenshire wrote: post #23
bjpbakker wrote: post #16

This article isn't anything more than a rant. The author filed a bug in the QT issue tracker [1] that some proprietary screen reader (JAWS, that his customers use) does not work well with QT on Windows. No (technical) details provided whatsoever. I don't believe anyone in the QT team is /against/ stronger support for accessibility. IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top p…

> IMO it is understandable that fixing some piece of proprietary software is not a top priority. I believe it's more appropriate for the author to rant against JAWS for not caring about QT, than the other way around. Worth pointing out, JAWS is proprietary, but it is also very widely used. I'd imagine its user-base is many, many times that of NVDA (which is the open source equivalent).

Yeah sorry about that. Maybe "some" seems a bit too careless. Not intended that way.

Substituting it for "the most popular proprietary screen-reader software" still doesn't change anything on my opinion though :)

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#26

Post by LeifCarrotson »

amake wrote: post #20
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is the specific, in-context meaning - but many people, even software developers, don't know that. To them, "accessible" has its conventional or conversational definition: able to be accessed, or available. They would view the title as describing software that you can install or run on any operating system, which QT seems to supply.

> but many people, even software developers, don't know that I find it hard to believe that software developers would not be aware of the term "accessibility" as meaning features facilitating use by handicapped users.

Quick poll of my coworkers (we do industrial automation, there's next to zero thought or money given for accessibility except the awareness that start and stop buttons, typically red and green, must also be labeled in case users are red/green colorblind:

- Me: On HN enough to know what it means.

- Senior EE in PLC programming: No clue.

- Senior dev, mostly self-taught: Means it can be accessed? Easy to use, or intuitive?

- College Intern: It means it's able to be used by people with disabilities.

(Senior dev: Oh yeah! I read an article on that a while ago.)

So our shop was 2/4 on it. Granted, we're a little atypical, but as a lot of programs are written with no thought to accessibility, there are a lot of devs who don't think about accessibility.

I suspect we'd have similar results for 'localization'. They'd probably guess 'internationalization' from context.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#27

Post by whyever »

mb720 wrote: post #15

I get that the author is frustrated with false claims about Qt, but calling people working on open source software "hippie coders" is just an insulting misrepresentation harming any rational debate.

I don't understand how people can be so entitled about free software. Especially given the reply by the Qt developers:

> The JAWS people didn't answer emails when we reached out to them (admittedly quite a while ago), so we've been focusing on NVDA support. Patches to improve the situation with JAWS are welcome. Note that we may eventually implement UIA as opposed to IAccessible2, but that work is currently going slow.

So they tried to work with them, but they did not reply. How are they supposed to fix the issue?

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#29

Post by kronos29296 »

Somehow the author assumes that the native gui has better accessibility features. In a world of bloated frameworks and browser as a gui type apps not every app is accessible. Most of the time it isn't even on their radar because of the tiny user base. One of those things that is just plain wrong when you spectate but when it is your job to do you find it a pain to implement.

Re: For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

#30

Post by whyever »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #24
mb720 wrote: post #15

I get that the author is frustrated with false claims about Qt, but calling people working on open source software "hippie coders" is just an insulting misrepresentation harming any rational debate.

I think ive read enough LKML to realize name calling doesn't slow software development and free software devs can handle being told off once in a while.

> free software devs can handle being told off once in a while.

That's survival bias: Those who can't are not Linux devs.

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