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SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

slint-ui.com

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#11
post #5

Hopefully this starts supporting accessibility tools before it gets too much traction and people start shipping inaccessible apps. The WebAssembley output demos on the homepage just render to a and are completely inaccessible with any of the usual tools (screen reader, keyboard-only, voice dictation etc) but there's a GitHub issue ( https://github.com/slint-ui/slint/issues/32 ) so fingers crossed.

Yeah, a UI toolkit that doesn’t have even basic accessibility bindings is basically illegal to use for commercial products in multiple major countries now. No specific shame on Slint (everyone has their own roadmaps) but when even big companies are failing* in this way it does seem like we’ve got a long way to go as an industry.

* Flutter has no accessibility bindings on the web and therefore falls under the same “illegal” category.

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#12
post #8

The requirements state "If you're using C++, a compiler that supports C++ 20" and All I'm thinkin' is it must be nice to be able to choose a modern compiler like that. Some of us are lucky to get C++14. I'm not saying we should be stuck on old compilers forever, but in C++ land, especially when I have to integrate with other frameworks or game engines, the assumption that I can choose my compiler or will always be on…

On the Rust side they require a compiler released 10 weeks ago, and it is actually reasonable, thanks to Rust's strong backwards compatibility and painless auto-update.

C++ the language also has pretty strong backwards compatibility. It's also trivial to install a new Clang version on most systems. But it certain spaces that's not what matters. Maybe you are only allowed to use That One Certified Compiler from 15 years ago and getting a certification for a newer compiler is not feasible. Or maybe you're on a system where the C++ standard library is part of the system and so you cannot use newer language features because that would require raising the minimum required OS version (I remember that some parts of the C++ standard library are not available if you compile for older macOS versions, for example).

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#13
post #5

Hopefully this starts supporting accessibility tools before it gets too much traction and people start shipping inaccessible apps. The WebAssembley output demos on the homepage just render to a and are completely inaccessible with any of the usual tools (screen reader, keyboard-only, voice dictation etc) but there's a GitHub issue ( https://github.com/slint-ui/slint/issues/32 ) so fingers crossed.

Yeah, a UI toolkit that doesn’t have even basic accessibility bindings is basically illegal to use for commercial products in multiple major countries now. No specific shame on Slint (everyone has their own roadmaps) but when even big companies are failing* in this way it does seem like we’ve got a long way to go as an industry. * Flutter has no accessibility bindings on the web and therefore falls under the same “il…

I’m surprised by how much progress we’ve made in this area. I used to make android apps circa 2013-15. Accessibility was an afterthought, a nice to have.

Reading the SwiftUI docs in 2022, it’s front and centre. They tutorial covers accessibility soon after “hello world”. Every module of the tutorial has a section on setting the right accessibility info, rather than a single, optional accessibility tutorial. It makes me happy that doing the right thing is the default.

I’m planning on making a small productivity app just for myself, but it’ll be 100% accessible simply because they’ve made it so easy.

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#15
post #5

Hopefully this starts supporting accessibility tools before it gets too much traction and people start shipping inaccessible apps. The WebAssembley output demos on the homepage just render to a and are completely inaccessible with any of the usual tools (screen reader, keyboard-only, voice dictation etc) but there's a GitHub issue ( https://github.com/slint-ui/slint/issues/32 ) so fingers crossed.

Yeah, a UI toolkit that doesn’t have even basic accessibility bindings is basically illegal to use for commercial products in multiple major countries now. No specific shame on Slint (everyone has their own roadmaps) but when even big companies are failing* in this way it does seem like we’ve got a long way to go as an industry. * Flutter has no accessibility bindings on the web and therefore falls under the same “il…

Flutter does handle accessibility on the web, but not very well. You need to press a button hidden from non-screenreader users and then Flutter will make a tree of dummy elements with aria attributes that let you use the app. You can see this if you use a screenreader or your browser of choice's accessibility tree inspector on the demo app.

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#17
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a UI toolkit that doesn’t have even basic accessibility bindings is basically illegal to use for commercial products in multiple major countries now. No specific shame on Slint (everyone has their own roadmaps) but when even big companies are failing* in this way it does seem like we’ve got a long way to go as an industry. * Flutter has no accessibility bindings on the web and therefore falls under the same “il…

Flutter does handle accessibility on the web, but not very well. You need to press a button hidden from non-screenreader users and then Flutter will make a tree of dummy elements with aria attributes that let you use the app. You can see this if you use a screenreader or your browser of choice's accessibility tree inspector on the demo app.

Ah, OK, looks like they’ve progressed a bit since I evaluated it. Thanks for the update.

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#18
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Rust side they require a compiler released 10 weeks ago, and it is actually reasonable, thanks to Rust's strong backwards compatibility and painless auto-update.

Yeah the problem isn't nearly as pronounced for rust, since rustup exists and rust itself isn't really available on any platforms you can't just update the toolchain yourself. C++ has a lot more tangled dependencies going on especially when you're stuck with a vendor's compiler. Make no mistake: the problem here isn't necessarily technological.

I don't understand what would be an environment where you could fetch the latest rust from internet but not the latest clang. I do my builds on centos:8 (well, rockylinux now) and it has access to the latest GCC 11. On Debian derivatives llvm itself provides up to date repos and on Windows, llvm-mingw works perfectly.

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#19
post #5

Hopefully this starts supporting accessibility tools before it gets too much traction and people start shipping inaccessible apps. The WebAssembley output demos on the homepage just render to a and are completely inaccessible with any of the usual tools (screen reader, keyboard-only, voice dictation etc) but there's a GitHub issue ( https://github.com/slint-ui/slint/issues/32 ) so fingers crossed.

Yeah, a UI toolkit that doesn’t have even basic accessibility bindings is basically illegal to use for commercial products in multiple major countries now. No specific shame on Slint (everyone has their own roadmaps) but when even big companies are failing* in this way it does seem like we’ve got a long way to go as an industry. * Flutter has no accessibility bindings on the web and therefore falls under the same “il…

> a UI toolkit that doesn’t have even basic accessibility bindings is basically illegal to use for commercial products in multiple major countries now

Any sources for that? I've never seen such a claim outside of Hacker News. A quick Google search i did about it only shows some court cases in U.S. (and in those cases it seems to be up to the judge with many failing). The closest is a requirement from EU in 2018 that web sites by the member states' government (ie. it is only for government web sites) has to be accessible. That makes sense, but it only covers government web sites specifically, not any other use for a toolkit (e.g. desktop apps) or even private sites.

Re: SixtyFPS Becomes Slint

#20

The requirements state "If you're using C++, a compiler that supports C++ 20" and All I'm thinkin' is it must be nice to be able to choose a modern compiler like that. Some of us are lucky to get C++14. I'm not saying we should be stuck on old compilers forever, but in C++ land, especially when I have to integrate with other frameworks or game engines, the assumption that I can choose my compiler or will always be on…

It's usually very old projects that are stuck with old C++ versions, no? I mostly work in embedded, and even there, new GCC or Clang versions are rarely hard to pull in.
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