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My A11y Journey

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

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Re: My A11y Journey

#11
post #6

> A lot of the Linux accessibility support depended on X11 behaviour that is now widely regarded as a set of misfeatures. It's not actually good to be able to inject arbitrary input into an arbitrary window, and it's not good to be able to arbitrarily scrape out its contents. While that may be true, I'd suggest that it is not a consensus view and, more specifically, there is probably a consensus that the capability t…

Yes, I always find these kinds of screenshot restrictions more of a friction than real security. After all, anyone can still take a photo of the screen, less convenient, but it bypasses the restriction entirely. I understand the goal is to prevent malware from taking screenshots, but true security should come from a better model, like customizable capabilities. If needed, add 2FA or some form of consent before allowing a screenshot: the solution should be smarter, not just restrictive.

Re: My A11y Journey

#12
post #11
post #6

> A lot of the Linux accessibility support depended on X11 behaviour that is now widely regarded as a set of misfeatures. It's not actually good to be able to inject arbitrary input into an arbitrary window, and it's not good to be able to arbitrarily scrape out its contents. While that may be true, I'd suggest that it is not a consensus view and, more specifically, there is probably a consensus that the capability t…

Yes, I always find these kinds of screenshot restrictions more of a friction than real security. After all, anyone can still take a photo of the screen, less convenient, but it bypasses the restriction entirely. I understand the goal is to prevent malware from taking screenshots, but true security should come from a better model, like customizable capabilities. If needed, add 2FA or some form of consent before allowi…

On (version 47 of) Gnome/Wayland, any program can take a screenshot (by calling out to gnome-screenshot) but the screenshot is accompanied by a flashing of the screen to alert the user that it is happening.

Gnome probably attempts to restrict taking a screenshot without flashing the screen (and I'm currently trying to figure out how to bypass the restriction).

Re: My A11y Journey

#17
> X11 never had a model to permit this for accessibility tooling while blocking it for other code. Wayland does, but suffers from the surrounding infrastructure not being well developed yet.

Does it? Because last I checked, Wayland did not, in fact, have the same features, and you don't get credit for "permitting" use of something that doesn't exist.

> When you read anything about Linux accessibility, ask yourself whether you're reading something written by either a user of the accessibility features, or a developer of them. If they're neither, ask yourself why they actually care and what they're doing to make the future better.

Okay: AFAIK, mjg59 is not a user of a11y features, and is not a developer of them (22 years ago yes, since then no). Ergo, by his own standards he isn't allowed to talk about this.

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