Accessibility: Do we have it in mind?

[saona-raimundo]

Hi there!

Thank you for the great work!

I wanted to ask for accessibility features in the kas gui system.

For example:

• Screen-reader integration
• Localized zoom
• Keyboard control
• Tab navigation
• etc...

Btw, I have to applaud the Stepless DPI scaling! :D

Details

I consider accessibility part of "empowerment", as in the rust book foreword.

Other GUI frameworks in Rust have not achieved accessibility support (egui, druid, dear imgui (link ot C lib), iced, conrod, azul). Also, accessibility is much easier to have included in an early stage of a project than an after-thought.

100% accessibility is not the goal, but it is important to make a conscious effort for accessibility. So, in the kas gui system, is accessibility in mind?

References

Most of these references are about accessibility in the web, but they apply just as much to desktop apps.

• Accessibility handbook
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• Accessibility - Learn web development | MDN
• Reakit: Build accessible rich web apps with React
• Mui (Another React accessibility framework)

[dhardy]

Hello,

Screen-reader integration

No current plans here. I see some discussion related to this in emilk/egui#167.

Localized zoom

How is this feature supposed to work? I see you wrote emilk/egui#941. The fundamental questions here are (1) how is zoom controlled and (2) which part of the screen is zoomed.

• Zoom an area around the mouse: there are already desktop plugins (at least on the desktop I use, KDE) to do this.
• Enlarge the whole application at start-up: this is already possible, either by changing the screen scale factor under display settings, or (on X11) via environment variable, e.g. export WINIT_X11_SCALE_FACTOR=1.5. See How is the scale factor calculated.
• Zoom some region of the application relative to everything else, e.g. a "zoomable frame". This would need (1) controls and (2) some way of creating a sub-region with different scale factor. Not too hard I think.

Keyboard control

What were you looking for that doesn't already exist?

Tab navigation

This should work; if not open a bug report. See e.g. #231 (but open a new report for new issues).

So, in the kas gui system, is accessibility in mind?

Keyboard control has been in mind from early on. Screen readers no, mainly since I lack specific experience/motivation.

---

By the way, why is this issue created against the tutorials repo? Should I move it?

[saona-raimundo]

Thank you for the complete reply!

I was just starting with kas and thought that asking was the right thing to do after reading the tutorials. It is not like I have a feature request, or maybe adding some docs in the tutorial? We could add tab-navigation and keyboard control, i think they are good selling points!

I just found this repo about accessibility in UIs, which solves many of my questions (it is WIP). When ready, screen-reader integration should be "for free"!

---

About the correct repo, yes, sorry, I meant to put it in kas. Do you mind moving it?

[dhardy]

If you are talking about revising the README, please feel free to make an edit/PR.

[dhardy]

We could add tab-navigation and keyboard control, i think they are good selling points!

What do you mean by this? Add some documentation about it here?

Tab-navigation is enabled by default (though it can be broken if a widget handles Command::Tab — several real apps like text editors do basically this).

Keyboard control: the calculator tutorial does mention key bindings. Other types of keyboard controls are not supported yet (nor are context menus, which bear some resemblance to how global shortcuts would work).

[saona-raimundo]

Tab-navigation is enabled by default

Do you think it is worth mentioning it in Hello: push button example? :)
There is a button there and it can be accessed by tabbing.

Keyboard control: the calculator tutorial does mention key bindings.

It does, indeed! Although a little late in the tutorial, keyboard control is there.

I was playing with it and had the problem that it "did not work for composed key-bindings":

• It works perfectly for single keys: Typing Alt + 9 is like pushing the button 9.
• It does not work for composed key-bindings: In my keyboard, to type +, I have to type Shift + = (US keyboard). I tried typing Alt + Shift + =, but it did not work, it behaves as if I had pressed only Alt + = (no shift).