2021-07-05, 22:36
Hello all,
Currently accessibility in Kodi is a bit of a problematic situation. The Kodi screenreadr addon works -- but from what I can tell its maintenance status is unknown. Furthermore, placing accessibility in an addon requires that the addon be maintained by its author, which essentially makes it a third-class citizen of sorts.
I've come to request that this be merged into the official Kodi source code. This has several advantages:
* The accessibility functionality can be maintained by Team kodi and it can be constant across all current and future Kodi releases.
* People with disabilities won't need sighted assistance to make the program accessible; all they'd need to do would be to press a key (for example) to get it working.
* The barrier of entry for new people who have a disability to Kodi will be minimized as much as possible. Nobody will need to ship custom versions of Kodi just so that people with disabilities can use it out of the box.
* Maintenance of the functionality will be in Kodi, meaning that if Kodi updates the Python interpreter and it breaks addons, accessibility will be there. We won't need to wait for the addon developer to find the time to fix the breakage.
Some disadvantages are:
* Developers will need to know how to make the UI accessible.
* Accessibility can be complicated depending on how its done.
I see two paths to this success:
1. The accessibility features (e.g. high contrast, screen-reader support, ...) can be merged into the UI toolkit that Kodi uses; or
2. Team Kodi can implement the functionality themselves.
The first option will be easiest for Team Kodi but harder for the UI toolkit developers. The advantage to this though is that all apps that use the UI toolkit will benefit from this functionality, not just Kodi. Additionally, this can take advantage of frameworks like UIA or ATK so that no special text-to-speech modules need be added because screen readers will pick up the functionality automatically.
The second option would be hard on Team Kodi but easy on the UI toolkit devs. The UI toolkit wouldn't need to do much if anything. The major disadvantage of this is that Team Kodi will need to implement all of the functionality themselves, which may prove quite difficult.
(I don't know what UI toolkit Kodi uses, and I can't seem to find it, so for all I know it might be in-house.)
I would love to see this in official Kodi releases; as it currently stands, the Kodi screenreader addon (and other accessibility adons I don't know of) put a risk on the users themselves: should a Kodi update break something within the Kodi API, accessibility goes away until the addon is updated, which could be never. This forces these users to remain on a particular Kodi release to avoid this, and that's just not a very viable solution, especially when that version loses support.
What do you guys think?
Currently accessibility in Kodi is a bit of a problematic situation. The Kodi screenreadr addon works -- but from what I can tell its maintenance status is unknown. Furthermore, placing accessibility in an addon requires that the addon be maintained by its author, which essentially makes it a third-class citizen of sorts.
I've come to request that this be merged into the official Kodi source code. This has several advantages:
* The accessibility functionality can be maintained by Team kodi and it can be constant across all current and future Kodi releases.
* People with disabilities won't need sighted assistance to make the program accessible; all they'd need to do would be to press a key (for example) to get it working.
* The barrier of entry for new people who have a disability to Kodi will be minimized as much as possible. Nobody will need to ship custom versions of Kodi just so that people with disabilities can use it out of the box.
* Maintenance of the functionality will be in Kodi, meaning that if Kodi updates the Python interpreter and it breaks addons, accessibility will be there. We won't need to wait for the addon developer to find the time to fix the breakage.
Some disadvantages are:
* Developers will need to know how to make the UI accessible.
* Accessibility can be complicated depending on how its done.
I see two paths to this success:
1. The accessibility features (e.g. high contrast, screen-reader support, ...) can be merged into the UI toolkit that Kodi uses; or
2. Team Kodi can implement the functionality themselves.
The first option will be easiest for Team Kodi but harder for the UI toolkit developers. The advantage to this though is that all apps that use the UI toolkit will benefit from this functionality, not just Kodi. Additionally, this can take advantage of frameworks like UIA or ATK so that no special text-to-speech modules need be added because screen readers will pick up the functionality automatically.
The second option would be hard on Team Kodi but easy on the UI toolkit devs. The UI toolkit wouldn't need to do much if anything. The major disadvantage of this is that Team Kodi will need to implement all of the functionality themselves, which may prove quite difficult.
(I don't know what UI toolkit Kodi uses, and I can't seem to find it, so for all I know it might be in-house.)
I would love to see this in official Kodi releases; as it currently stands, the Kodi screenreader addon (and other accessibility adons I don't know of) put a risk on the users themselves: should a Kodi update break something within the Kodi API, accessibility goes away until the addon is updated, which could be never. This forces these users to remain on a particular Kodi release to avoid this, and that's just not a very viable solution, especially when that version loses support.
What do you guys think?
