State of accessibility on Linux, perspective of a blind user

original author here, thought of posting this here to get some more discussion going around this issue.

here's some more context regarding screen reader support… https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/_winauto/

I do like the fact Microsoft tries to support other AT software besides their own, unlike apple.

I wonder if this has regressed substantially in the shift to Wayland.

Long ago I was told by a GNOME dev that accessibility support was one of the few government funded GNOME development efforts at the time, and that was accompanied by a claim of it being best in class. IIRC it was also touted as one of the reasons development progress can be so bogged down in GNOME; they don't break accessibility.

No dog in this particular race here, but I do find most of the above suspect. Except for Wayland obviously getting in the way, that does seem likely to stall progress if you're not allowed to break accessibility. Wayland prioritized security over usability, I don't think clients are even allowed to know where their window is placed. No idea how that world is supposed to support unprivileged screen scrapers, in X it's trivial.

I find the subject extremely frustrating. Accessibility is an afterthought across the entire stack from the OS to the application. On the application side significant developer effort is required. Not only in the design at the end but properly supporting the rolls. Accessibility APIs are extremely complicated to interface with and are fragmented on Windows and Linux. Higher level libraries often abstract enough to do automation but not provide enough performance or have missing api features to provide screen readers and voice programmers the kind of accessibility they need.

The mobile space has much more accessibility than the desktop environment. Don't get me started out about the web...