6 ms·

I’m in one of the “other smaller groups not included here”: people who rely on accessibility tooling that isn’t supported by Wayland. My options are: - keep us

by ntietz 3y ago

I’m in one of the “other smaller groups not included here”: people who rely on accessibility tooling that isn’t supported by Wayland. My options are: - keep using X and stay healthy - switch to Wayland and get strong nerve pain again - switch to Windows or Mac If Wayland were my only option, I would have to leave Linux for my health. So the technical merits of Wayland truly don’t matter. Accessibility is an oft forgotten requirement and it’s something that can affect all of us at one time or another. We ought not ignore it.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago
I can see how this would be utterly limiting. But even trackpad support is kind of messy at the moment; gestures work but pointer speed just seems weirdly different no matter what.
lynx23 3y ago
Wayland kind of reminds me of the CORBA->DBus rewrite. GNOME 2 was awesomely accessible. Then came the "qwe need to switch to DBus" people, and basically destroyed the hard work of many years. For me, GNOME Accessibility never recovered from that blow. And then came Wayland, which made things even worse.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  Tech's Gen Y seemed to have a big 'NIH' thing about things that predated them, and it seems to have continued with Gen Z. Resulting in a lot of things just being trashed for the sake of it 'not being modern enough'.
csdreamer7 3y ago
Would you please talk more about this? * What is your condition exactly? * What were you using on X that made you healthy? * How is it broken on Wayland?
- ntietz 3y ago
  Various nerve stuff in my arms, limiting my use of keyboards. With an ergonomic keyboard I can get through most days, but I’m having more flare ups lately so I’m doing more voice coding. I use Talon. It simply doesn’t support Wayland, and I believe its maintainer who says that there are issues with Wayland which make support infeasible. Using it on X makes my nerve pain much less.
  - csdreamer7 3y ago
    > and I believe its maintainer who says that there are issues with Wayland which make support infeasible. * Where did they say that? * What are the issues? I am trying to narrow down exactly what the issues are. Too much of the conversation is 'something' is broken in Wayland because of 'something'.
    - yorick 3y ago
      https://artemis.sh/2022/09/18/wayland-from-an-x-apologist.html#accessibility https://artemis.sh/2022/09/18/wayland-from-an-x-apologist.ht... talks about it at length. It seems the main things missing for Talon are: - input emulation, doable via uinput but not great - standard way to query the list of windows and active focus - for dwell-click support, you need to be able to know if the user is moving their mouse or clicking so you can cancel your autoclick
- Galanwe 3y ago
  > What were you using on X that made you healthy? Well my WM for a start. It did not migrate to Wayland. And I also need to share screen from time to time (teams, Google chat, etc), which results in a dark screen for viewers in Wayland.
  - nanna 3y ago
    I despise Teams but when I was forced to use it for work and screensharing didn't work, I had to flee back to X. Any updates from Microsoft on this issue?

by ntietz 3y ago

bemusedthrow75 3y ago

I can see how this would be utterly limiting. But even trackpad support is kind of messy at the moment; gestures work but pointer speed just seems weirdly different no matter what.

lynx23 3y ago

Wayland kind of reminds me of the CORBA->DBus rewrite. GNOME 2 was awesomely accessible. Then came the "qwe need to switch to DBus" people, and basically destroyed the hard work of many years. For me, GNOME Accessibility never recovered from that blow. And then came Wayland, which made things even worse.

NikkiA 3y ago
Tech's Gen Y seemed to have a big 'NIH' thing about things that predated them, and it seems to have continued with Gen Z. Resulting in a lot of things just being trashed for the sake of it 'not being modern enough'.

csdreamer7 3y ago

Would you please talk more about this? * What is your condition exactly? * What were you using on X that made you healthy? * How is it broken on Wayland?

ntietz 3y ago
Various nerve stuff in my arms, limiting my use of keyboards. With an ergonomic keyboard I can get through most days, but I’m having more flare ups lately so I’m doing more voice coding. I use Talon. It simply doesn’t support Wayland, and I believe its maintainer who says that there are issues with Wayland which make support infeasible. Using it on X makes my nerve pain much less.
- csdreamer7 3y ago
  > and I believe its maintainer who says that there are issues with Wayland which make support infeasible. * Where did they say that? * What are the issues? I am trying to narrow down exactly what the issues are. Too much of the conversation is 'something' is broken in Wayland because of 'something'.
  - yorick 3y ago
    https://artemis.sh/2022/09/18/wayland-from-an-x-apologist.html#accessibility https://artemis.sh/2022/09/18/wayland-from-an-x-apologist.ht... talks about it at length. It seems the main things missing for Talon are: - input emulation, doable via uinput but not great - standard way to query the list of windows and active focus - for dwell-click support, you need to be able to know if the user is moving their mouse or clicking so you can cancel your autoclick
Galanwe 3y ago
> What were you using on X that made you healthy? Well my WM for a start. It did not migrate to Wayland. And I also need to share screen from time to time (teams, Google chat, etc), which results in a dark screen for viewers in Wayland.
- nanna 3y ago
  I despise Teams but when I was forced to use it for work and screensharing didn't work, I had to flee back to X. Any updates from Microsoft on this issue?