making kicad accessible for vissually impared users

[Tech]

hi all,
I am a blind student who is interested in embedded systems and electronics and one of the problems i have is designing a PCB.
initially, I was planning to create A plugin for kicad but then thought why not make kicad itself accessible as much as possible before that without changing the current workflow.
From what I have seen so far, KiCad already has many of the foundations needed for accessibility. Much of the workflow can already be performed using the keyboard, which is ideal. It appears that many remaining issues could be addressed by exposing the necessary information to screen readers through the accessibility APIs.

I would like to contribute to this effort and help make KiCad more accessible for blind and visually impaired users. I would appreciate any guidance on where to start, areas that would benefit most from accessibility improvements, or any existing work related to accessibility that I should be aware of.

If there are developers who have worked on the UI or accessibility infrastructure, I would be grateful for any advice or pointers.

I look forward to contributing and working with the community to make this work as it would be a huge win for the visually impaired community.

[Seth Hillbrand]

Hello! 

We're happy to receive direct feedback on the usability of KiCad with accessibility devices. 

Our work to this point has focused on standardizing menus, dialogs and other elements that exposed to screen readers by default. As well, we have spent time improving the color contrast between on screen elements. 

You are welcome to propose any additional improvements.  I would recommend drafting a proposal first before coding so that we can ensure that the work fits with the larger KiCad plans

Seth

    

Seth Hillbrand

Lead Developer

+1-530-302-5483‬

Long Beach, CA

www.kipro-pcb.com    in...@kipro-pcb.com

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[tech]

Hi Seth,

Great to hear that KiCad is open to the idea of making it accessible for everyone.

That was my plan as well. I've already found a few areas where I think accessibility could be improved, such as the main application dialog before moving on to more complex parts of the interface.

I plan to start small so I can get my feet wet before taking on larger changes.

My initial idea is to expose information about the currently focused component or any other relevant context to the screen reader while changing as little of the existing workflow as possible.

I imagine it as an additional accessibility layer that becomes active when a screen reader is running.

I would also like to keep the implementation cross platform so it works across all operating systems that KiCad supports. I've been looking at libraries such as Prism, which provide a common API for applications to communicate with screen readers. Of course, I'm still in the early stages of researching the best approach.

Any help with drafting a proposal would be greatly appreciated. I'm very new to this kind of design work, so I'm not entirely sure where to begin.

I started thinking along these lines after noticing that KiCad's keyboard navigation is already quite similar to a mod called Factorio Access, which aims to make the game Factorio accessible for blind users.

I've always liked the idea of making mainstream software work for everyone instead of building separate accessibility tools whenever possible. I'd love to help achieve that goal with KiCad so that no one is left out.

Regards,

Tech

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[Seth Hillbrand]

Hello Tech, 

While writing this spec, keep in mind that kicad remains a GPL software package and so must comply with license requirements on linked libraries. Specifically, libraries must be GPL compatible in their license. Basically requires as a minimum at the source for the library is available. 

Exceptions to this requirement include libraries that are distributed as part of the standard operating system.

You may be required to create an interface layer that communicates over IPC. Depending on the license of the accessibility libraries that you intend to link..

Start small and be sure to list all third-party requirements before digging into implementation details. We can help you with the document once you have a rough draft. 

Seth

    

Seth Hillbrand

Lead Developer

+1-530-302-5483‬

Long Beach, CA

www.kipro-pcb.com    in...@kipro-pcb.com

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/49f560c7-67b0-4a90-98e7-4a26618aa29c%40gmail.com.

[tech]

hi Seth,

the library is licensed under MPL2.0. Here is the github link if you wanna take a look: https://github.com/ethindp/prism

Also, do you have any samples on how to write the docs? That would help me get an idea on how to approach it

thanks for the help.

Regards

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAFdeG-q2GwGdubimQMLND-Ocx9RUc5hR8N4dixJ-7eKZ_jbBuQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Seth Hillbrand]

Sounds good.

Here is an example I wrote a few weeks ago.  Yours does not need this level of detail, especially in the beginning but you should think about how the code interacts with the existing code, where a person using KiCad would configure it and how you plan on testing it.

Seth

    

Seth Hillbrand

Lead Developer

+1-530-302-5483‬

Long Beach, CA

www.kipro-pcb.com    in...@kipro-pcb.com

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/a16a3ddb-2121-4f1e-82e2-6a509b387f10%40gmail.com.