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Whenever I discover a new GUI toolkit, my first question is always “is it more native than the Web?” For reference, here are some ways Web apps have better system integration than Flutter:

  • System fonts, font hinting settings, and font fallback settings.
  • System text navigation shortcuts.
  • System scrollbar visibility, thickness, and click settings/behavior.
  • System highlight menus and controls (on touchscreens).
  • System display scaling settings.
  • System reduced-motion settings (An API is documented, but I have never used a Flutter app that actually disables animations. I may be wrong).
  • System reduced-transparency settings.
  • System forced-colors mode (Windows High Contrast Mode).
  • System color palettes (some browsers support setting default colors without necessarily forcing the palette).
  • System media controls (play/pause/skip, current track, e.g. using MPRIS on freedesktop platforms).

It’s an easier question to answer than my second question: “What WCAG conformance level can I hope for?


Originally posted on seirdy.one/notes/2023/11/21/mo… (POSSE). #Flutter #Accessibility

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in reply to Seirdy

Sadly, not all of these features are automatically available to the user in an Electron app. So in some ways, a real web app is more accessible by default than an Electron app. But some apps have to run outside the browser sandbox.
in reply to Seirdy

My experience with Fluffychat tells me that it’s possible to make a reasonably-usable mobile app for Flutter if you excuse the shoddy support for reduced-motion (note that I have not evaluated its experience with assistive technologies like screen readers). But yeah, don’t even bother with Flutter for Desktop or Web.