WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Current state of accessibility API:s in Linux?

for

From: Christophe Strobbe
Date: Jun 4, 2009 4:25AM

Hi Peter,

At 20:51 3/06/2009, you wrote:
>Hi!
>
>I have received some questions about the equivalent of MSAA for the
>Linux platform. It looks like AT-SPI
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_Technology_Service_Provider_Interface)
>is the equivalent, but I can't find information on how it has been
>implemented in Linux distributions. A statement from 2005
>(http://accessibility.freestandards.org/a11yweb/forms/soi.php)
>indicates that it had some momentum.

The confusing thing about Linux accessibility is that you sometimes
find the acronym ATK, sometimes AT-SPI, and sometimes ATK/AT-SPI. I
looked for an explanation of how ATK and AT-SPI relate and found it
in a presentation on the GNOME accessibility infrastructure:
<http://www.gnome.asia/static/upload/event_file/Introduction_of_accessibility_on_GNOME.pdf>;.

However, the accessibility API mappings that I've seen so far usually
describe mappings to the GNOME ATK (see
<http://library.gnome.org/devel/atk/1.26/>;), see for example:
* the role mapping in the WAI-ARIA User Agent Implementation Guide:
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-implementation/#mapping_role>;,
* mozilla.org's Accessibility API cross-reference:
<http://www.mozilla.org/access/platform-apis>;.
* Mono's mapping between UIA and ATK:
<http://www.mono-project.com/Accessibility:_Mapping_UIA_to_ATK>;.
* Adobe's "PDF Accessibility API Reference":
<http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/pdfs/access.pdf>; (p 70-71:
mapping of PDF document items to roles in SPI).

Does that help?

Best regards,

Christophe

>Peter Krantz
>http://www.standards-schmandards.com


--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
---
"Better products and services through end-user empowerment"
http://www.usem-net.eu/
---
Please don't invite me to LinkedIn, Facebook, Quechup or other
"social networks". You may have agreed to their "privacy policy", but
I haven't.