[Accessibility] QLabels not read by JAWS screenreader (Qt 5.4/Win 8.1)

[Reckless Player]

Hello,

I’m a sort of advanced user of GUI apps (of every type). I’ve been
hanging around this list for a while because I have lots of complaints
against Qt, and if time permits will air them in due course.

Focusing on the present topic, IAccessible2 has been supported by Jaws
and NVDA for a long time. Jaws and NVDA now mainly support UIA and
IAccessible2.
IAccessible2 has been used in Eclipse and SWT (QT’s sort of rival I
suppose) since Eclipse 3.6.
In fact, SWT has been the most accessible library under Windows. It
gave access to toolbars to screen reader users much before UIA
attempted to do the same.
Under MSAA, screen reader users, who are more broadly keyboard users
didn’t have access to toolbars and toolbar controls.
Even though I love Python, I lament the fact that SWT didn’t catch on,
and now is not likely to do so.

In summary, a fully accessible Qt app is like a mythical beast for me at least.
I’m not a GUI developer, but I have to write to many developers
requesting for accessibility improvements.
And because of what I have to go through, I highlight the following 2
lines that make all the difference between me have to beg developers
to make their apps accessible and being ignored; and never having to
contact them at all because nothing extra has to be done.

>From SWT:
“Most of the accessibility support is built right in to the SWT
widgets; therefore, in many cases a developer only has to use the
widgets correctly to take advantage of the full spectrum of MSAA and
IA2 capabilities.”

>From Qt (5.4):
“*only a few changes* from your side may be required to allow even
more users to enjoy it.”


On 2/18/15, Marcel <lists at nightsoul.org> wrote:
>
>> Am 17.02.2015 um 11:23 schrieb Frederik Gladhorn
>> <frederik.gladhorn at theqtcompany.com>:
>>
>> On Monday, February 16, 2015 05:51:30 PM Marcel wrote:
>>> [Crosspost from the qt-project.org forums, didn’t receive a reply there
>>> within a week.]
>>>
>>> Hello!
>>>
>>> I’m trying to make our application accessible with a screenreader. A
>>> blind
>>> colleague uses JAWS, therefore I use that for testing. Reading widgets
>>> that
>>> expect user input works quite well so far, but I’m having some trouble
>>> elsewhere:
>>>
>>> QLabels are not read at all. JAWS has a hotkey that should “read the
>>> whole
>>> window” (JAWS-Key + B), but for our application that just reads the
>>> window
>>> title and nothing else. Everything I can focus directly via tabbing is
>>> read
>>> as well – which is of course not desirable with labels.
>>>
>>> Probably related: We have some QWizards set up. There, the QWizardPage
>>> title
>>> and description texts are used to convey most of the information
>>> concerning
>>> the wizard page’s purpose. Those texts are not read at all as well.
>>>
>>> I have a minimal test case application[0] that has a label (not read), a
>>> button and a QLineEdit (accessibleName read fine for both). The button
>>> opens a wizard that has title and description (not read) and no further
>>> input widgets.
>>>
>>> Do accessible applications usually have all necessary information in
>>> input
>>> widget descriptions (therefore not needing labels) or am I doing
>>> something
>>> wrong?
>>>
>>> This is Qt 5.4 on Windows 8.1 with JAWS 16.
>>
>> QLabel should provide accessibility information (it is represented by
>> QAccessibleDisplay in qtbase/src/widgets/accessible/simplewidgets.h).
>>
>> It would be interesting to know if it works with NVDA (I suspect that it
>> does,
>> looking at Steve's testing. The issue seems to be that we expose the
>> information in a way that JAWS either ignores it or doesn't see it at all,
>> so
>> it's a bug in Qt.
>>
>> It would be great if you file a bug report (https://bugreports.qt.io) so
>> we
>> keep track of it.
>>
>> Does anyone know if JAWS makes use of IAccessible2 at all? Maybe that is
>> the
>> reason for it not working.
>
> I have filed the report here: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-44537
> NVDA doesn’t read that label as well when pressing NVDA+B („read whole
> window“, results in *only* the window title being read) but announces it’s
> accessibleName and description upon mouseover.
>
> Marcel
>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Frederik
>>
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Marcel
>>>
>>> [0] https://filetrain.de/a11ytest.zip
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Accessibility mailing list
>>> Accessibility at qt-project.org
>>> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
>
> _______________________________________________
> Accessibility mailing list
> Accessibility at qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/accessibility
>


-- 
Peace
RP