[BRLTTY] Linux console hacking (was: Re: Footsteps towards better accessibility in Linux)

[Aura Kelloniemi]

Hi Jason & list,

On 2026-03-29 at 12:34 -0400, "Jason J.G. White" <jason at jasonjgw.net> wrote:
 > Aura Kelloniemi <kaura.dev at sange.fi> wrote:
 > >1. AT-SPI2 depends on D-Bus and is deeply integrated into the GNOME
 > >accessibility stack. This is reasonable in a full desktop environment, but not
 > >in lightweight scenarios (e.g. kmscon). Pulling in D-Bus and the GNOME
 > >accessibility infrastructure purely to reach a terminal emulator is overkill
 > >and most likely will not be an acceptable solution for kmscon or other
 > >non-GNOME terminal emulators.

 > This is true of at-spi, but not of the desktop accessibility 
 > architecture that Matt Campbell has been working on for Linux. It uses a 
 > Wayland protocol, eliminating the DBus dependency and its performance 
 > issues.

The project is called Newton. It actually does not avoid D-bus, because the
accessibility technology (AT) protocol is still D-bus based – an option was
considered.

 > If that work continues, any solution for terminal emulators would need 
 > to be integrated with it, as the intention is ultimately to supersede 
 > at-spi.

I kind of agree, but the problem (with kmscon, tmux, etc.) is that they are
not run inside a Wayland compositor, and dependency on Wayland is hardly
better than a dependency on AT-SPI2 for lightweight terminal emulators.

BTW, it seems that the design of the Newton protocol has been directed by
existing experience/features of Orca. Braille has not received a lot of
consideration, it seems.

-- 
Aura