Someone please tell me screen reader support isn’t broken on the major Linux distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu that ship Wayland as default.
(I can’t get the modifier key for Orca to work under the latest Fedora Silverblue and, according to the linked issue, it’s because… it just doesn’t work under Wayland? That can’t be right, right? It would mean the major Linux distributions are inaccessible.)
Wow, OK, so I wasn’t missing anything. It looks like the only available screen reader on major Linux distributions is broken and has been for some time.
Lack of accessibility not being a show stopper for an operating systems blows my mind.
We’re talking about distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux with enterprise customers (aren’t there some accessibility laws that apply here? 🤔)
@aral
Some people are mentioning this for ages but waylanddevs think it's not their problem...
They passed it down the stack apparently...
Let alone the fact that lots of automation tools rely on the same mechanism as accessibility tools I think some things have been "oversimplified" or "intentionally underengineered" https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Accessibility/
Just installed and had a quick play with a new screen reader for Linux called Odilia. It doesn’t support key bindings at all at the moment but it did read stuff out and performed better than Orca at that with the custom Festival voice I’m using (Orca performs very well with its internal robot voice but the Festival voices are far more human.)
Anyway, not ready for use in any way but might be worth keeping an eye on:
@aral One of the missions financed by the Sovereign Tech Fund is precisely "Design and prototype a new accessibility stack". It's discussed almost every week in This Week in GNOME, for example https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2024/02/twig-135/.
@lebout2canap And that’s awesome. My question remains how it was decided to make something (Wayland) the default when it is inaccessible. (I guess it’s a rhetorical question because the answer can only be “because lack of accessibility is not a show stoppper.”)
@nekohayo I did, yes; thanks for the reminder. However, what I don’t get is how these Linux distributions decided it was OK to make Wayland the default before it could be made accessible.
@aral
Fedora did it as soon as 2016, surely to get broader testing from early-adopters, as it is the "leading edge" distro that pushes the latest techs as soon as feasible.
LOTS of things were broken & unreliable in the Wayland session back then, not just accessibility. Right up until Q4 2023, I always had to revert to the Xorg/X11 session; I presume anyone needing a11y was expected to do the same.
I trust Xorg removal will only happen once a11y & color management are ready.
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