Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) is an open source

software library In computer science, a library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and subr ...

, part of the

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

project, which provides

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

s (APIs) for implementing

accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...

support in software. One common nomenclature to explain an accessibility framework is a usual client-server architecture. In that way, assistive technologies (ATs) such as

screen readers A screen reader is a form of assistive technology (AT) that renders text and image content as speech or braille output. Screen readers are essential to people who are blind, and are useful to people who are visually impaired, illiterate, or ha ...

, would be the clients of that framework, and computer applications would be the server. In this architecture the client and server need to communicate with each other, usually using the IPC technology of the platform. Ideally the accessibility framework expose this to the client and server in a transparent way. Usually the API for both client-side and server-side applications are the same, and the accessibility framework provides a client-side and a server-side implementation of that API. In the case of GNOME, there are two different APIs, one for the client-side (

Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI) is a platform-neutral framework for providing bi-directional communication between assistive technologies (AT) and applications. It is the ''de facto'' standard for providing accessibility ...

(AT-SPI)) and a different one for the server-side (ATK) due to historical reasons related to the underlying technologies.

Implementations

The ATK abstract headers files are freely available to help developers who want to make their

GUI toolkit The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...

accessible. Developers who use stock widgets of GUI toolkits that implements the ATK headers can more easily make their applications accessible. However, if they develop their own widgets, they will have to ensure that they are exposing all the accessible information. GAIL (GNOME Accessibility Implementation Library) was the name of the accessibility interfaces implementation defined by ATK for

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprie ...

, the widget library of GNOME. Initially, GAIL was an independent module mapped to GTK+ but since GNOME 3.2, GAIL was merged into GTK+, so the ATK implementation is integrated into GTK+ and GAIL is deprecated. Apart from GTK+, other GUI toolkits and applications have implemented ATK in order to be accessible, such as OpenOffice/

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...

, Mozilla's Gecko, Clutter and WebKitGTK+.

Development

ATK is part of the GNOME Accessibility Framework that was released in 2001. The main development force behind ATK was the Accessibility Program Office (APO) of

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

, Inc. (now

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

) with contributions from many community members. When Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 they cut developer jobs of full-time developers working on GNOME accessibility components such as the Accessibility Toolkit ATK and the Orca screen reader. Since then, ATK is mainly maintained by the GNOME community.

Successor

During

GUADEC GUADEC, the GNOME Users And Developers European Conference, is an annual developer conference, whose prime topic is the development of the GNOME desktop environment and its underlying base software, such as GTK, GStreamer, etc. The first GUADE ...

2020 Emanuelle Bassi announced to have been working for about 6 months on a successor to ATK. Accessibility will no longer be maintained out-of-tree but be part of

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...

. Available since GTK 3.99.0 The new approach will implement WAI-ARIA (World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications).

Maintainers

ATK development has been led by their maintainers with the help of its community. The maintainers so far are: Current: * Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias Previous: * Bill Haneman * Leon Fan * Li Yuan

References

External links

GNOME Accessibility Team wiki

GNOME developer: ATK

Accessibility Toolkit Source Download
{{GNOME Accessibility API GNOME Accessibility GTK Software that uses Meson