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Has TUI accessibility improved at all? Textualize (Python), Charm (Go) and tui-rs/Cursive (Rust) make building TUI apps appealing, but I'm put off by the idea

Has TUI accessibility improved at all? Textualize (Python), Charm (Go) and tui-rs/Cursive (Rust) make building TUI apps appealing, but I'm put off by the idea of making apps like this if they have no screenreader support.

sekao 4y ago
I think we will need new standards here, because terminal emulators currently don't have any semantic information about what TUI programs are rendering. Browsers have the benefit of HTML to know this is a button, and that is a paragraph. A terminal is an unstructured grid of characters. The best we can hope for is for terminal emulators to use heuristics or AI to make sense of what TUI programs are rendering.
willm 4y ago
Textual has a browser-like DOM internally, which means that it has the same kind of structured information that a screen-reader would need. But there isn't a screen-reader API for the terminal to expose that. On the roadmap is a browser target for Textual (same API, just rendering in the browser). Once that's available Textual can make use of browser technology for accessibility.
- sekao 4y ago
  The browser target sounds neat. Do you plan on running the python in web assembly, or would it be a client/server design?
  - willm 4y ago
    Client / server initially. The app "runs" remotely with a JS front-end.
- samwillis 4y ago
  I'm intrigued what the planned architecture is for the web front end. I'm guessing WebSocket back to a persistent process on the backend/server? So all operations happening via the websocket connection. Only the GUI in the browser? I bit like Phoenix LiveView. This would be a really interesting toolkit for building real-time UIs for remote processes.
  - willm 4y ago
    That's pretty much on the nose!
    - samwillis 4y ago
      Ah, so that also explains the significant use of asyncio for all UI operations. Are you also considering a "WebView" front end, a little like Electron?
      - willm 4y ago
        We were! I figured if we don't do it somebody else will. But there is already a project to bundle a Textual app with a working browser. So you can distribute Textual apps as a binary.
cbm-vic-20 4y ago
I once asked the dev relations person of a TUI framework company if their stuff worked on a real physical terminal, and they didn't even know what I meant by that. Back to the nursing home for me!

sekao 4y ago

I think we will need new standards here, because terminal emulators currently don't have any semantic information about what TUI programs are rendering. Browsers have the benefit of HTML to know this is a button, and that is a paragraph. A terminal is an unstructured grid of characters. The best we can hope for is for terminal emulators to use heuristics or AI to make sense of what TUI programs are rendering.

willm 4y ago

Textual has a browser-like DOM internally, which means that it has the same kind of structured information that a screen-reader would need. But there isn't a screen-reader API for the terminal to expose that. On the roadmap is a browser target for Textual (same API, just rendering in the browser). Once that's available Textual can make use of browser technology for accessibility.

sekao 4y ago
The browser target sounds neat. Do you plan on running the python in web assembly, or would it be a client/server design?
- willm 4y ago
  Client / server initially. The app "runs" remotely with a JS front-end.
samwillis 4y ago
I'm intrigued what the planned architecture is for the web front end. I'm guessing WebSocket back to a persistent process on the backend/server? So all operations happening via the websocket connection. Only the GUI in the browser? I bit like Phoenix LiveView. This would be a really interesting toolkit for building real-time UIs for remote processes.
- willm 4y ago
  That's pretty much on the nose!
  - samwillis 4y ago
    Ah, so that also explains the significant use of asyncio for all UI operations. Are you also considering a "WebView" front end, a little like Electron?
    - willm 4y ago
      We were! I figured if we don't do it somebody else will. But there is already a project to bundle a Textual app with a working browser. So you can distribute Textual apps as a binary.

cbm-vic-20 4y ago

I once asked the dev relations person of a TUI framework company if their stuff worked on a real physical terminal, and they didn't even know what I meant by that. Back to the nursing home for me!