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Accessibility: keyboard, screen readers, colour, scaling and contrast

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#267 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
28/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
c
Domain
accessibility, desktop

Research direction

Start by reading ACCESSIBILITY.md and the linked issue references #210 and #227, then review the release checklist and the main windows named in the issue. The work spans keyboard access, screen reader support, colour, scaling, contrast, and release process checks; done means these areas have actionable coverage and the issue form and release checks are in place.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

ECCE should be usable by people who work by keyboard, use a screen reader, have reduced colour vision or low vision, or need larger text. It is also good design in general. A project statement goes in ACCESSIBILITY.md; this ticket tracks the work.

Keyboard

  • Every action reachable without a mouse: menus, toolbars, the Organizer tree, the editors, the Builder's panels.
  • A visible focus on every control; a sensible tab order in each window (the Calculation Editor, Register Machines, the Launcher, Preferences); no traps in dialogs or docked panes.
  • Shortcuts listed in the menus (several exist; check gaps).

Screen readers (Orca on Linux, NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on macOS)

  • Accessible names on icon-only buttons: toolbars, the message-pane buttons, the Builder's tool buttons. wxWidgets uses the button's label or tooltip; check that each has one.
  • Status changes announced, or at least shown as text: job state, verify results, errors.
  • The 3-D view itself is not readable; offer the same information as text where it matters (atom list, measurements, property tables already exist).

Colour never the only signal

  • Run states already use shape as well as colour; check the rest: spectra and plots (line style or markers as well as colour), orbital signs (+/− as well as two colours), charge and ESP colouring (with a legend and values).
  • Colour-blind-safe defaults (Okabe-Ito, viridis; #210).

Scaling and low vision

  • Text follows the system font size and scale; windows lay out at larger text (the apps tests already check small screens).
  • Windows: DPI awareness, so 150–200 % scaling is sharp (#210).
  • Contrast of text and controls at least WCAG 2.2 AA (4.5:1 for text) in light and dark themes; the viewer on a white background (#210, #227).

Process

  • An accessibility issue form (what you tried, what went wrong, system and assistive technology), linked from ACCESSIBILITY.md.
  • A keyboard-only pass and a screen-reader spot check on the main windows before each 9.x release, noted in the release checklist.
Dominant language
C
Stars
10
Forks
8
Avg merge
21m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Getting set up

This project ships no dev container, Dockerfile or contributing guide, so setting up is up to you: start from its README, and see our first-contribution guide for the general steps.

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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