Re: Ideas for upcoming Bolzano GTK+ hackfest

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Willie:

Note that the GTK+ hackfest is more focused on issues that relate to
GTK+ and the future of GTK+.  It is probably not a good forum to deal
with issues where applications are not properly implementing GTK+ a11y
features, and other issues which do not relate directly to GTK+.

> I have a few things that would be great to get a handle on:
>
> 1) http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=535827 - the current 
> solution of using environment variables is deemed distasteful by some, 
> but nobody has been able to offer a better solution.  Hackers might try 
> to look at this one hard.

This seems like an issue that would be appropriate to discuss.

> 2) AT-SPI/D-Bus - the funding deadline is coming up in mid-March.  We 
> need people to take a look at this work and evaluate where it is at and 
> what it will take to move it forward.  My end goal here is that an 
> assistive technology such as Orca can provide access to both GNOME and 
> KDE apps.

Isn't AT-SPI somewhat separate from GTK+?  I thought AT-SPI was supposed
to be widget-set neutral.  Isn't the AT-SPI migration to D-Bus somewhat
orthogonal to GTK+ planning?  What specific GTK+ related issues do you
see needing attention in relation to this work?

> 3) Evince a11y - Behdad might be working on getting something going with 
> this, but any effort scoping out the problem would be great.  The end 
> goal here is provide decent access to PDF documents.

Are there limitations in the GTK+ widget set that prevent evince a11y
from moving forward, or is this really an issue with the evince
application itself not implementing a11y features properly?  The
hackfest may be a good opportunity to discuss some ideas about this
issue, but it seems a bit off topic to me.

> 4) WebKit a11y - while not GNOME per se, it would be great to take a 
> look at where they are and try to connect with any WebKit folks that 
> might be there.  The end goal here is to make sure WebKit is accessible 
> and/or at least get the WebKit developers on the path to accessibility.

Again, I am not sure how this relates directly to GTK+.  Does it?

I think we would need to focus more on GTK+ specific issues to warrant
bringing these topics up at a GTK+ hackfest.  For example, it might
be an appropriate place to discuss the future of libgail or ATK.  For
example, it would be a good forum for discussing how to address adding
a11y support to GTK+ widgets that don't support them yet.  Toolbars are
an example of a widget that does not support a11y, and perhaps now might
be a time to address that.

It might be good if someone on the a11y team were to review
a11y-specific GTK+ bugs to see what issues might be good to discuss.
I notice 32 "gtk+" bugs with the "accessibility" keyword.  Issues like:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89336
  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424304
  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=519090
  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=570824

Brian