Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface
Stable release | 2.50.2[1]
/ 16 March 2024 |
---|---|
Repository | |
GNU LGPL (version 2)[2] | |
Website | wiki |
Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI) is a platform-neutral framework for providing bi-directional communication between
One common nomenclature to explain an accessibility framework is a usual client-server architecture. In that way,
Usually the API for both client-side and server-side applications are the same, and the accessibility framework provides a client-side and a server-side implementation of that API. In the case of GNOME, there are two different APIs, one for the client-side (AT-SPI) and a different one for the server-side (Accessibility Toolkit (ATK)) due to historical reasons related to the underlying technologies.[4]
Implementations
AT-SPI was originally designed for using
The GNOME project decided that the 3.0 release would be free of ORBit and Bonobo, meaning that a D-Bus AT-SPI solution was required.[6][7] In an effort to move AT-SPI forward, a D-Bus project was started in November 2006. This took the form of a performance and design review available on the GNOME wiki. Work began on the implementation in May 2007.[8] The D-Bus version of AT-SPI, AT-SPI version 2, was released along with GNOME 3.0 in April 2011.[9][10]
Support
AT-SPI provides an ATK bridge, so all the widget systems or applications that implement ATK will automatically communicate all their events to AT-SPI. The GNOME widget system,
Development
AT/SPI is part of the GNOME Accessibility Framework that was released in 2001. The main development force behind ATK was the Accessibility Program Office (APO) of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (now Oracle) with contributions from many community members. When Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 they cut developer jobs of full-time developers working on GNOME accessibility components like the Accessibility Toolkit ATK and the Orca screen reader. Since then, it is mainly maintained by the GNOME community.
Maintainers
ATK development has been led by their maintainers with the help of its community. The maintainers so far are:[13]
Current:
- Mike Gorse
Previous:
- Mark Doffman
- Li Yuan
Other uses
AT-SPI can also be used for automated testing of user interfaces, with tools such as Linux Desktop Testing Project and Dogtail.[14]
Licensing
AT-SPI is released under the
See also
- Accessibility Toolkit (ATK)
- Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA)
- Microsoft UI Automation (UIA)
- IAccessible2
See also
References
- ^ "Tag 2.50.2".
- ^ a b "AT-SPI git source code repository, COPYING file". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "ATK/AT-SPI SIG Overview". Archived from the original on 2014-04-13. Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ Sánchez Prada, Mario (February 3, 2013). "Accessibility in [WebKit]GTK+". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "Orca Documentation Series". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "Planning for GNOME 3.0". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "GNOME 3 Porting Guide". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "Accessibility/ATK/AT-SPI/AT-SPI on D-Bus". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "GNOME 3.0 released: better for users, developers". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "Git source code released with GNOME 3.0". Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "Accessibility on Linux". Archived from the original on 2014-07-07. Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "Qt accessibility APIs". Archived from the original on 2014-07-07. Retrieved 2014-04-10.
- ^ "AT-SPI's Maintainers file". Retrieved 2014-03-30.
- ^ "ATK/AT-SPI Special Interest Group". Retrieved 2020-11-26.