Accessibility

The latest version of Mono Accessibility is 2.1, released on August 24, 2010. Get more info about this release.

Table of contents 1 Mono Accessibility 1.1 Project Goals 1.2 How do I get it? 1.3 Participating 1.4 Development 1.4.1 High Level Overview 1.4.2 Functional Specifications 1.5 For Team Members 1.5.1 General 1.5.2 Developers 1.5.3 Quality Assurance 1.5.4 Build 1.6 Related Material 1.6.1 Mono Winforms 1.6.2 Other Organizations 1.6.2.1 Linux Foundation 1.6.2.2 GNOME 1.6.2.3 Others 1.7 Project Origins

Mono Accessibility

The Mono Accessibility project enables many Windows applications to be fully accessible on Linux.

Applications based upon System.Windows.Forms can take advantage of this with no extra code, and enjoy the same level of Accessibility provided by Windows on any system Mono supports.

This is accomplished through two efforts – First, implement the managed UI Automation framework targeted towards Mono’s System.Windows.Forms project and second, implement a bridge between our UI Automation implementation and ATK, the dominant Accessibility technology on Linux.

Project Goals

• Make System.Windows.Forms applications accessible via ATK
• Make Silverlight applications (using Moonlight) accessible via ATK
• Allow UI Automation based Accessibility Technologies to read Linux applications built on at-spi

How do I get it?

Packages are provided for various Linux distributions, or you can build from source.

A summary of past releases are available on our Releases page.

Participating

The Mono Accessibility team is always looking for people to assist us writing code, documentation or finding and filing bugs. If you’re interested, join our mailing list, or hop in to our active IRC channel, #mono-a11y at irc.gimp.org.

Development

High Level Overview

• Architecture of UI Automation on Linux
• Project Roadmap (High Level View)
• Development Schedule (Detailed View)
• Phase II Work Breakdown
• Members of the Novell UIA Team

Functional Specifications

• Provider
• Bridge
• Notes on the UI Automation specification
• Similarities and Differences

For Team Members

General

• Development with Scrum
• Getting Started With Development

Developers

• Moonlight Main Page
• Provider: (Architecture, Implementation Notes)

Quality Assurance

• All Open UIAutomation Bugs

• Development Progress (Enhancement Bugs by Control)

• Product Test Plan
• Test Progress
• Test Coding Standard
• Test Log
• Test Summary
• Bug Specification
• Testing Howto
• Strongwind Basics Tutorial

Build

• Product Build Plan

Related Material

Mono Winforms

• WinForms code in Mono’s mcs project (ViewVC)
• UIAutomationWinforms project for winforms providers (ViewVC)

Other Organizations

There is a lot of work being done in the area of accessibility and we encourage and participate in as much of that work as possible. The following is a list of organizations you should be aware of if you are interested in contributing to accessibility on Linux.

Linux Foundation

• Accessibility Working Group
  • Accessibility mailing list server
  • #a11y on irc.linux-foundation.org
• ATK/AT-SPI Special Interest Group
  • ATK/AT-SPI mailing list server

GNOME

• GNOME Accessibility Project with links to documentation etc.
• GNOME Accessibility-devel list - Technical discussions and patches for at-spi, gail, and ATs
• GNOME Accessibility list - Accessibility development discussion
• #a11y on irc.gimp.org
• Python Powered Accessibility
• GNOME Accessibility QA
• GNOME Accessibility slide intro

Others

• Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA) - The body maintaining the UIA specification
• openSUSE Accessibility

Project Origins

On November 8, 2007 Novell announced a collaborative effort with Microsoft to make this happen.