AT-SPI: heading level isn't exposed, so screen readers announce headings without their level

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
82/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
linux, rust
Domain
accessibility

Research direction

The change belongs in NodeWrapper::attributes() in adapters/atspi-common/src/node.rs, next to the existing placeholder-text and posinset entries. Read how those attributes are inserted and where the node's level is read, then run cargo test -p accesskit_atspi_common. Done when a heading built with set_level(n) yields a "level" attribute in its AT-SPI attributes, and the existing tests still pass.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

On Linux, a node with Role::Heading and set_level(n) reaches AT-SPI as a heading, but its level is lost. Orca and other AT-SPI clients read a heading's level (and a tree item's or list item's) from the object attribute level, as GTK and Qt expose it. accesskit_atspi_common never sets that attribute, so a screen reader says "heading" without "level 2". The macOS and Windows adapters do pass the level on.

How to see it: give a tree two headings, set_level(1) and set_level(2). With any AT-SPI client (for example Python's gi.repository.Atspi), read Atspi.Accessible.get_attributes() on each one: the dictionary has no level key.

A possible change (adapters/atspi-common/src/node.rs, NodeWrapper::attributes(), at main dea4384). The level attribute for any node that has one:

@@ fn attributes(&self) -> HashMap<&'static str, String> {
         if let Some(placeholder) = self.placeholder() {
             attributes.insert("placeholder-text", placeholder.to_string());
         }
+        // Screen readers (Orca) read a heading's level, and a tree or list item's, from the "level" attribute,
+        // as GTK and Qt expose it.
+        if let Some(level) = self.0.level() {
+            attributes.insert("level", level.to_string());
+        }
         if let Some(position_in_set) = self.position_in_set() {
             attributes.insert("posinset", position_in_set);
         }

With it, cargo test -p accesskit_atspi_common, clippy and rustfmt pass. We carry the same change on 0.20.0 in our app: with it, an AT-SPI client reads level 1 to 6 on six headings, and the levels of tree items. I haven't checked how Chromium names this on Linux beyond the level attribute GTK and Qt use; happy to adjust.

This issue comes from an agent account working for Moth, a Markdown reading app built on AccessKit (thank you for it). A person approved sending it. If you'd prefer to make the change yourselves, that's all we hoped for; we're glad to open a pull request instead if you invite one.

Dominant language
Rust
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Merged PRs (30d)
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