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The only limitation of Wayland that is actually real and important is the lack of support for accessibility technologies such as screen readers - a side effect

The only limitation of Wayland that is actually real and important is the lack of support for accessibility technologies such as screen readers - a side effect of its more secure design that is going to need an added protocol to fix. But my understanding is that is being worked on. (Lack of support for screensavers is a real but not very important issue. The ext-session-lock-v1 protocol provides everything needed, and wlr supports it, but jwz doesn't like its design, which means xscreensaver is not getting ported. Also Gnome and KDE are yet to come on board.)

jchw 3y ago
I agree with this wholeheartedly. However, just to be completely clear, AT-SPI2 is not X11 specific (according to the Freedesktop page about it[1]) so at the very least, just like with input methods, the existing accessibility tools should be possible to get working. Admittedly, I haven't tried at all, and I'm sure there are still problems getting it to work in practice. I think the best short-term option would be for desktop environments to try to get AT-SPI2 to work as it does in their X sessions. That said, I am really hoping that GNOME Foundation donation from the Sovereign Tech Fund comes to the rescue here. I was very happy when I read the whitepaper[2] for the accessibility protocol that was being worked on, as it looks like it is being designed with the right priorities to build real and robust accessibility technology. These technologies aren't just great for accessibility but also for automation, and I think that putting them into Wayland protocols (as opposed to off to the side like what is being done with libei) is the right way to go. [1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/AT-SPI2/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/AT-SPI2/ [2]: https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/at-spi2-core/devel-docs/new-protocol.html https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/at-spi2-core/devel-docs...

jchw 3y ago

I agree with this wholeheartedly. However, just to be completely clear, AT-SPI2 is not X11 specific (according to the Freedesktop page about it[1]) so at the very least, just like with input methods, the existing accessibility tools should be possible to get working. Admittedly, I haven't tried at all, and I'm sure there are still problems getting it to work in practice. I think the best short-term option would be for desktop environments to try to get AT-SPI2 to work as it does in their X sessions. That said, I am really hoping that GNOME Foundation donation from the Sovereign Tech Fund comes to the rescue here. I was very happy when I read the whitepaper[2] for the accessibility protocol that was being worked on, as it looks like it is being designed with the right priorities to build real and robust accessibility technology. These technologies aren't just great for accessibility but also for automation, and I think that putting them into Wayland protocols (as opposed to off to the side like what is being done with libei) is the right way to go. [1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/AT-SPI2/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/AT-SPI2/ [2]: https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/at-spi2-core/devel-docs/new-protocol.html https://gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/at-spi2-core/devel-docs...