Enable accessibility support bundling QT accessible plugin while building Mixxx

[pvagner]

The QT4 framework Mixxx uses for gui controls provides basic accessibility support for the default QT vidgets. This is not built-in by default into the qt libraries. It can either be used as a library or QT can load it as a shared library during the runtime.
QT accessible plugin is currently available for Windows and for the mac.
Mixxx uses standard vidgets mainly in the preferences dialog, in the menu and also in the library. When this plugin is bundled Mixxx is at least partially accessible to visually disabled users.
For more complete accessibility support in Mixxx it's important to enhance gui control relation ships and provide other means of accessing features which are not accessible with the QT4 accessible plugin. However I think those are seprate issues and they should be described with proper examples and use cases as a seperate bug reports / wishes.
This is a required for visually disabled people to be able to get started with Mixxx and they might also be able to provide further wishes when this is available in the official releases.

[pvagner (peter-v)]

I don't understand how to achieve this atm but to enable accessibility support while building for the mac we *should* ensure we are building for Carbon.
By default QT under mac builds for Cocoa which should become accessible starting with QT 4.8.

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

Hey pvagner,

I'm looking at adding your patch 1.10.0 and making the appropriate changes for OSX support of these accessibility libraries. I have a patch that seems to build -- but I don't know how to test it. Do you have friends who use OSX who could test for me? How could I verify the accessibility libraries are correctly bundled with Mixxx?

Also what about Linux? It's my understanding that Qt comes with these libraries by default on distributions of Linux like Ubuntu. My distribution at least has them in /usr/lib/qt4/plugins.

Thanks,
RJ

[pvagner (peter-v)]

Hello,
I am sorry I have no one to test on a mac right now.
I'll ask here and there and hopefully someone using voiceover on mac might be able to kick in.
Alternativelly voice over is available on each mac os 1.5 and higher I believe so i you have access to a mac computer, just hit command+F5 to start voice over fire up mixxx and try e.g. navigating through the menus using the keyboard if it'll produce satisfactory output.

Greetings

Peter

[pvagner (peter-v)]

Sorry for the double posting.
Under linux QT implements some accessibility support but there are missing dependencies which would convei that to the currently available assistive technologies.
There is a work underway but I don't know when QT linux apps become accessible to visually disabled people.

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

I tried VoiceOver with my change that bundles the accessibility plugins. VoiceOver was able to speak all the menu items with and without my patch. It's not able to speak preferences items or read tooltips in either case, though. Should providing these libraries allow VoiceOver to speak preferences items?

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

The plugins are currently bundled with the OSX package in what seems to be the right place. I can't seem to get VoiceOver to work -- but I think that might be a Qt issue.

[pvagner (peter-v)]

FYI qt-at-spi for linux now provides basic accessibility support in a way that blind people are able to use QT 4.8 based apps.
I have just installed Mixxx 1.10.1 on my laptop running Arch linux and it is accessible. I can get spoken menus as well as access preferences and other dialogs.
Ubuntu and similar distributions provide qt-at-spi package by default, for Arch users there is qt-at-spi-git available in the AUR.
Hopefully I will be able to return back to mixxxing since I havent used mixxx for months now after I started using linux more and more.

Thanks once again for this opportunity

[RJ Skerry-Ryan (rryan)]

Great to hear pvagner -- thanks for the help.

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 6:46 AM, pvagner <email address hidden> wrote:

> FYI qt-at-spi for linux now provides basic accessibility support in a way
> that blind people are able to use QT 4.8 based apps.
> I have just installed Mixxx 1.10.1 on my laptop running Arch linux and it
> is accessible. I can get spoken menus as well as access preferences and
> other dialogs.
> Ubuntu and similar distributions provide qt-at-spi package by default, for
> Arch users there is qt-at-spi-git available in the AUR.
> Hopefully I will be able to return back to mixxxing since I havent used
> mixxx for months now after I started using linux more and more.
>
> Thanks once again for this opportunity
>
> --
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> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/772025
>
> Title:
> Enable accessibility support bundling QT accessible plugin while
> building Mixxx
>
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[Swiftb0y (swiftb0y)]

Mixxx now uses GitHub for bug tracking. This bug has been migrated to:
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/issues/5878