Stride: tag the unlabeled buttons in the launcher

[sanslash332]

Hello guys,

I'm a blind developer, and for the complete use of a pc and development tools, the blind people must have to use assist technology software, in our case is a screen reader.

After a few checks with the xenko launcher (I can't test deeperli the xenko studio) apparently is a lot accessible, because is created with an accessible framework.

Witch framework is used to the gui of xenko launcher?

The most noticeable detail in the application, is that the majority of the buttons are unlaveled; so the screen reader can't read anything about that buttons; but other are completely tagged, like the button for show beta versions, report issues, discuss about xenko, etc.

The most important buttons that are unlaveled, are these for install / uninstall versions, the other that reports when you have some updates, etc.

So, can you improve these things?
Isn't a hard task to do; various frameworks have special properties for their gui components for interacts directly with automation tools or assistive technologies.

For a first approach to the accessibility will a very good first step; and the option to use the framework directly into visual studio only with code make xenko a very, very good option to blind developers that want create games, and the HRTF feature into your xenko.audio lib... buf... I have a lot of time findinga good framework that supports directly HRTF and are accessible, and xenko come to me like a gold for a miner :)

Thanks so far guys!

[Kryptos-FR]

Hi @sanslash332. Thanks for the feedback.

It is the first time that we have knowledge of a blind user. I'm thrilled that you consider using Xenko and we will make sure to improve your experience with it.

At the moment I think the fact that some buttons are labelled is more a happy coincidence than a real intent on our side. The launcher, as well as the game studio, are made using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). In that framework, it is sometimes useful to name controls and element for better control. But we did not do that for all of them, because we did not have a need for it before.

Now I understand that it is used by the screen reader, so I'll do some research and see what are the recommendations and good practices with WPF for accessibility.

Cheers!

[sanslash332]

Hello @Kryptos-FR
Thanks for your fast answer!

O, well. I'm very happy to ear that the gui is developed over WPF.
In fact, wpf has a lot, but a lot of features to make the UI of a program accessible and give useful (more than only the basic) information to the assistive technologies, so is only a work that we will do :)

The majority of the job, is done via the automation namespaces of WPF.
System.windows.automation is the most used for basic (and in various scenarios is OK for all job) and if you need more complicated things is the automation UI framework, but... Almost for me, windows.automation was OK at various times :)

So, about the buttons... Jaja trust me, is very common that without intention you create accessible content, only following basic recommendations of the framework that are you use.

So, a question. Different things that I'll be finding, for other controls and stuff... I have to post that here? or create a issue for one for each of them.

Thanks for your instant answer again! So, I'll go now to the forum, to ask some things about the framework itself.

[Kryptos-FR]

@sanslash332 for open discussions, you can use our forums and/or our discord channels.