a11y: No API for supporting a11y Selection interface
Currently, Gtk 4 (other than Gtk 3/ATK) does not seem to provide any way for custom widgets to support the AT-SPI Selection interface on Linux, which is used by assistive technology to report (and potentially modify) selection.
There is some implementation for Gtk's own widgets in gtk/a11y/gtkatspiselection.c
, but that is internal only, so nothing that custom widget authors etc. could make use of.
Steps to reproduce
- Read the Gtk 4 accessibility doc and Gtk 4 API docs
- Try to find a way to expose the AT-SPI Selection interface on Linux (or equivalent for other platforms)
Current behavior
There seems to be no way to do so, meaning that relevant information cannot be provided for assistive technology.
Expected outcome
There should be a way to implement the interface, so AT can make use of it.
Version information
- Gtk self-compiled on Debian testing from git main as of commit d2d2fb4b
Additional information
More essential interfaces can currently not be supported, like the AT-SPI Table and TableCell interfaces (somewhat related issue: #6268), Text interface (issue: #5912 (closed)), making it impossible for applications like LibreOffice to properly implement a11y when using gtk4 (as compared to gtk3 or qt6)