Accessibility Toolkit (ATK) is an open source

software library In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

, part of the

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

project, which provides

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

s (APIs) for implementing accessibility 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 blindness, blind people, and are useful to visually impaired people, Illiteracy, illiterate, ...

, 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 IPC may refer to: Businesses and organizations Arts and media * Intellectual Property Committee, a coalition of US corporations with intellectual property interests * International Panorama Council, an international network of specialists in ...

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 (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 A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of programs. Most wid ...

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 software 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 proprietary s ...

, 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 office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...

, 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., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

, Inc. (now

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

) 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 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 software 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 software, free and ...

. 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