The state of accessibility is worse than I thought, with progress getting undone every time gtk and qt update, let alone Wayland breaking screen readers.

Apparently accessibility on Linux has been unable to progress because every update undoes any progress.

I found this Mastodon thread through a lobste.rs thread linked in a Phoronix comment on an article about LACT. (click the eyeball to unhide everything on Mastadon.) It turns out every time there's an update to GTK or QT, it ends up completely breaking accessibility software. Linux has a golden rule: don't break user space. Unfortunately, people who depend on accessibility software find this rule broken constantly.

That's not even including how Wayland completely broke how screen readers are able to work. Apparently they figured out how to make it work, but I'm not sure if it's desktop environment agnostic, thanks to the different compositors.

But that's not even the half of it. The other issue is that apps in general aren't developed in a way that they are accessible. A screen reader might read each button as just button rather than its actual functionality. This is because, unlike Windows and Mac, there is no general accessibility API on Linux. This is one of the huge downsides of Linux not being an actual operating system. This is one of the biggest downsides of Linux being just a kernel instead of an actual operating system.

The good news is, at least Redha hired someone specifically to help with accessibility. These organizations all need at least one key accessibility number on board, making sure that updates won't completely break accessibility software.

I'm curious if it would be possible to create some sort of universal Linux accessibility API. Could something like that be built into Systemd? It wouldn't cover everything, but it would cover most distros. Or maybe there's something else we could do. Like how there are universal packaging formats, maybe someone could somehow create a universal Linux accessibility API. Maybe accessibility could be built into the kernel itself?

To any developers reading this, I understand that your time is limited. I'm not asking everyone to completely rewrite everything with accessibility in mind. But going forward, we need a push for development to take accessibility in mind from the beginning. Because right now, Linux is a terrible operating system to recommend for disabled people.