1. ATK and AT-SPI Hackfest

Primary contact: Alejandro Piñeiro Iglesias <apinheiro@igalia.com>
Secondary contact: Joanmarie Diggs <joanied@gnome.org>

1.2. The Problem

Applications and toolkits do not all implement ATK consistently. This has a negative impact on the assistive technologies' ability to provide a consistent cross-application user experience. Even in applications and toolkits in which the ATK implementation is complete, the information obtained from a single event and/or object is not always sufficient for an AT client to proceed immediately; instead it is often necessary to perform further queries and make decisions based on heuristics rather than concrete data. This has a negative impact on both performance and reliability.

1.3. Who Should Attend?

• Developers of applications and toolkits which implement ATK
• Developers of ATK and AT-SPI
• Developers of Assistive Technologies which rely upon AT-SPI
• Developers of testing solutions which rely upon AT-SPI

1.4. Proposed Tasks

NOTE: The following items were taken from the Accessibility Team Roadmap. You should expect this list to be periodically updated as we continue to prepare for the hackfest.

• Examine IA2 for items which would improve the user experience if added to Atk.

• Enhance Atk events to make them more informative (ie: AtkText::text-changed)

• Make AtkObject Attributes the standard way to expose additional, application- and toolkit-unique information (i.e. similar to what Gecko already does).

• Create more detailed documentation, including "best practices."
• Make any required, corresponding changes in AT-SPI.
• Accessibility issues, including the proper implementation of ATK, should be “GNOME Goals.”
• GObject introspection is the future and present, but:
  • Current Atk introspection annotations are incomplete
  • There are some method overlapping on the automatic generatic bindings

• Analyze and redesign AtkUtil (some problems detected in this mail

• Review the factory system and expecifically, AtkGObjectAccessible
  • Recent toolkit (St) developers asks to not use them
  • What happens when you expose non-gtyped objects (ie: Java, C++ hierarchies)
  • Still required? Should be move Gail to not use this system?
• Window related methods
  • at-spi expect window related methods (activate, deactivate, etc)

  • But the equivalent methods are not defined on ATK, but each implementation should emit them regardless that, in a hacky way (check GailUtil and CallyUtil)

  • Check if this could be solved defining a new AtkWindow interface

1.5. Agenda

Hackfests/ATK2011/Agenda

1.6. Pre-event "Homework"

• Review and revise the Proposed Tasks.

• Review and comment as appropriate on the bugs blocking the ATK Metabug.

• File any new bugs for problems/requests in GNOME's bugzilla, blocking the ATK Metabug.

• When in doubt, ask on the mailing list.

1.7. Venue

The hackfest will happen at the Igalia offices, which are located at c/ Bugallal Marchesi 22, 1st, 15008 A Coruña.

1.7.1. Hotel Info

The hotel is the Avenida hotel, which is a very short walk from the venue:

• Hotel Information, via Google maps

• Route to Igalia offices, via Google maps

NOTE: Igalia has arrangements with this hotel to provide discounted rates for Igalia events, such as this hackfest. Therefore, if you would like the discounted rate, you should be sure to mention Igalia and this event when you book your room.

1.7.2. How to get there

• Air: A Coruña has an airport connected to several cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Lisbon and London among others. Nearby Santiago de Compostela airport is connected to some other cities such as Dublin, Zürich, Frankfurt, Paris and Rome.
• Train: There are trains getting to A Coruña, the station is close to the venue/hotel.
• Bus: Buses are available, the station is close to the venue/hotel.
• Car: You can get there driving, indeed.

• Walking

1.7.3. Costs

• Venue: Free, provided by Igalia
• Hotel: Will be booked and paid by the GNOME Foundation
• Travel costs: Will be booked and paid by the GNOME Foundation
• Snacks and drinks during the day: sponsored by GPUL/Xunta
• Buffet lunches: sponsored by GPUL/Xunta
• Evening dinner sponsored by Mozilla Foundation Inc.

About the Hotel and Travel costs, we will use the budget we have assigned for accessibility hackfests by the Foundation, so we have a limit to spend. As usual you will send your requests to the Travel Committee. More information about the budget:

• Foundation budget for 2011

As the people require to add the cost data on the travel committee form, the approximated cost on the Avenida hotel (the one nearest to Igalia offices) is:

• Individual room: 43,50+8% VAT per day
• Double room: 47,50+8% VAT per day

That would include a buffet breakfast. As usual, we would prefer people using double rooms to reduce the cost, unless a good reason.

1.8. Attendees

1.9. Event sponsors (Thanks!)