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I'm willing to pay up to $10,000 (USD), to whomever I need to pay, to solve the #GNOME AT keyboard input handling problem once and for all. Currently, toolkits implementing AT-SPI have to pass all keyboard events to the AT-SPI registry, then wait for a response on whether the event should be processed as usual. No other platform does something like this, and this unique platform-specific requirement is a major complication for #AccessKit. I want to get this fixed. #accessibility
#Accessibility #gnome #accesskit

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in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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Efforts to solve this have been in limbo for a while. The GTK team already refused to implement the legacy solution in GTK 4. So AT-SPI has a solution that kind of works when using X11. And there's a draft PR to solve the problem for GNOME Shell on Wayland, but it's only half done. And because the X11 solution introduces its own problems, Orca only uses it for GTK 4 apps. So I'm willing to invest in getting this solved completely.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
To be clear, I'm not criticizing the GNOME developers or anyone else. They're all doing the best they can with the limited time and resources they have. But because this problem is affecting my project, I want to do what I can to help solve it.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
I could, of course, jump into the code myself. But (1) I don't currently have time to spend significant time on this, and (2) I don't feel that I'm expert enough in AT-SPI, Orca, Mutter, X, Wayland, D-Bus, etc. to implement a solution at all relevant layers of the stack that will be accepted upstream. So I want to make it worthwhile for the experts to work on this.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Tristan Partin
Tristan Partin
• •
have you by chance tried talking to @ebassi? He has done a lot of work on the accessibility stack recently. I know the GNOME Foundation cares quite a bit about accessibility on Linux.
@Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to Tristan Partin

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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@tristan957 @ebassi Not yet, only because I figured the owners of the relevant components (Mutter, at-spi2-core, maybe even Xorg) don't actually work for the GNOME Foundation. So I didn't really know whom to talk to.
@Emmanuele Bassi @Tristan Partin
in reply to Matt Campbell

Tristan Partin
Tristan Partin
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@ebassi The GNOME Foundation usually doesn't employ developers, but instead will contract out work to individuals or companies.
@Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to Tristan Partin

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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@tristan957 @ebassi Ah, great. Sounds like me paying the GNOME Foundation would be the best way to go then.
@Emmanuele Bassi @Tristan Partin
in reply to Matt Campbell

Emmanuele Bassi
Emmanuele Bassi
• •
@tristan957 The main person to talk to would be Carlos Garnacho, who works on the X11 and Wayland input stack in both GTK and GNOME Shell. The Foundation does not employ any developer, at the moment, so it's not an issue of funding, and more an issue of having people actively working on the stack.
@Tristan Partin
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

Emmanuele Bassi
Emmanuele Bassi
• •
@tristan957 In February, before FOSDEM, we're going to hold a GTK hackfest, and accessibility is on the agenda; I'll make sure to talk to Carlos about this issue. The main problem is not really going to be implementing an interface in GNOME Shell and GTK, though, but working on Orca and other ATs; sadly, we have not had much luck trying to involve AT maintainers, because there aren't many contributors on that side.
@Tristan Partin
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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@ebassi @tristan957 Orca is already conditionally using a newer method of keyboard handling in at-spi2-core in GTK 4 apps. So my understanding is that there are two blockers: the X11 solution introduces its own problem (temporarily deactivating and reactivating the focused window), and the Wayland solution (a PR in Mutter) is incomplete.
@Emmanuele Bassi @Tristan Partin
in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
@ebassi @tristan957 If I understand correctly, for this particular problem, very little work is needed on the Orca side, and I'd be happy to do that MR myself.
@Emmanuele Bassi @Tristan Partin
in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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@ebassi I've never contributed to Orca before. However, I have a strong background in screen reader development. I used to work on the Narrator team at Microsoft (my non-compete is expired), and I wrote another Windows screen reader before that.
@Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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@ebassi I wonder, though, if Mike Gorse would be able to participate in that hackfest.
@Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to Matt Campbell

Emmanuele Bassi
Emmanuele Bassi
• •
I don't think he will, because travelling to FOSDEM is not entirely trivial, but we can always ping him.
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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@ebassi Mike has already been in contact with me via email. He says that solving the Orca keyboard handling problem is mostly a matter of tying up loose ends, and he has already started on that again. So my offer of money may have been premature. The offer still stands though.
@Emmanuele Bassi
in reply to Matt Campbell

Emmanuele Bassi
Emmanuele Bassi
• •

No worries; I'll try to get @federicomena and Mike and see what's still missing in at-spi2-core and mutter; maybe we need something entirely different, like a Wayland protocol similar to the wayland text input one.

At this point, X11 is mainly an exotic legacy platform, so it's not really a consideration in new designs.

@Federico Mena Quintero
in reply to Matt Campbell

Emmanuele Bassi
Emmanuele Bassi
• •
@tristan957 Solving this issue in the compositor is possible, but of course it requires fixes in every compositor. Anyway, I've raised this issue with the people involved with GTK and GNOME Shell, so we can talk about possible solutions.
@Tristan Partin
in reply to Matt Campbell

Meg Ford
Meg Ford
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have you contacted the GNOME board about it? In the past there have been contracts for work that have been arranged by the foundation. Maybe they can help.
in reply to Meg Ford

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
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@m_22 Not yet. I already posted the same offer in an issue that I opened on the Orca issue tracker, but wasn't sure how to proceed.
@Meg Ford
in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
@m_22 I figured the tricky part would be getting the owners of the relevant components (at-spi2-core, Mutter, maybe even Xorg) to prioritize this work.
@Meg Ford
in reply to Matt Campbell

Meg Ford
Meg Ford
• •
emailing the foundation board is probably a good step. At least when I was on the board they didn’t determine technical direction for the project, but they would be able to help you figure out next steps for getting this done.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
I'm now in contact with GNOME folks about this. You all can stop boosting. Thanks.

reshared this

in reply to Matt Campbell

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
Damn, I should have tried privately contacting the GNOME Foundation first. Then I could have avoided the unnecessary publicity. Like I said, the parent toot doesn't need any more boosts. Thanks.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Peter Vágner
Peter Vágner
•
I would say now we #screenReader users should step in and try to fill your github sponsors page with suitable amounts as best as we can.
github.com/sponsors/mwcampbell
#screenreader
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