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Comment by PascalW | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure that QT is not using native widgets? I always thought QT used native widgets and a quick search [1] seems to confirm this:

> Recent versions of Qt use the native style APIs of the different platforms, on platforms that have a native widget set, to query metrics and draw most controls.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28software%29

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Seems to confirm it, but doesn't. What that means is Qt uses the native style APIs to get the system styles (e.g., theme color, highlight colors, default fonts/sizes, etc.), so it can draw controls that look like native controls. But it's drawing widgets, not using native widgets. In many/most cases, users will never know the difference, but it is different.

Blind users definitley notice the difference, because Qt apparently doesn't implement the platform accessibility APIs quite right, particularly on WIndows.

Two anecdotes:

1. The TeamTalk (http://bearware.dk/) voice chat system is popular among blind people. Originally when it was Windows only, it was an MFC application. Then when it went cross-platform, the developer used Qt. But the Qt version was inferior for blind users, so the developer still maintains the MFC version just for them.

2. Rant from a blind programmer trying to develop an accessible cross-platform application with Qt: https://blind.guru/qta11y.html

On every major platform, it's possible for non-native widgets to be accessible by implementing the platforms' accessibility APIs. But Qt doesn't do this very well.

That doesn't confirm use of native widgets. It confirms use of native styles.

iirc it uses native widgets, the problem was that for some time QT used Carbon and stuff like scrollbars looked outdated until they added cocoa support because Apple stopped updating visually carbon

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