QTads/Hugor Accessibility Bug Reports

I don’t have access to my GitHub account right now, so this will do. What I’ve written below applies to both Hugor and QTads. Luckily, QT has a built-in accessibility API, which works on Windows and Linux. I haven’t tested these interpreters on Linux, as I’m running Windows, but I may end up spinning up a virtual machine to do so.

What Works?

The file dialogue boxes (open, save, and restore) all work well with screen readers. No issues whatsoever. The menu bar is accessible once you know the hotkeys, or can navigate to it using the NVDA screen reader’s object navigation. Pressing alt, which would normally give access to the top layer of the menu bar, does nothing. The preferences and about dialogue boxes are also accessible with screen readers.

What Doesn’t work?

Text input and output are completely unavailable for screen reader users. NVDA’s “speak typed characters” and “speak typed words” settings allow me to know what I’m typing, but unlike Frotz, for example, (which requires an add-on for NVDA, but is nonetheless accessible), I do not know what commands I’m switching between in the command history when using the arrow keys. As for output, there is no way to read the outgoing text from a game, even using NVDA’s object navigation. The elements on-screen are described as “grouping” and “unknown”, with no other information given.

3 Likes

Can confirm these same accessibility aspects are missing when running QTADS on Linux.

I think this is because a lot of QTADS is just using QT for rendering, and much of the menu and interface stuff is built from scratch, but my memory on this is kinda foggy.

2 Likes

It’s a bummer that these (plus Gargoyle to boot) use non-standard rendering, meaning even the IF interpreters add-on I mentioned previously (which includes support for all the major WinGLK-based interpreters, plus Frotz and a few others) can’t access the text in any meaningful way. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I can’t play Hugo or TADS games in other interpreters. The WinGLK Hugo interpreter from like 2006 still works, as does the bog standard TADS interpreter, but it would be nice to be using what many people consider the optimal, modern interpreters for these platforms.

2 Likes