[Python-ideas] A GUI for beginners and experts alike (Mike Barnett)

Wes Turner wes.turner at gmail.com
Fri Aug 24 13:16:01 EDT 2018


Accessibility is a very real advantage of Qt solutions.

http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/accessible.html

"""
[...]
applications usable for people with different abilities. It is important to
take different people's needs into account, for example, in case of low
vision, hearing, dexterity, or cognitive problems. Some examples of
accessibility measures are keyboard shortcuts, a high-contrast user
interface that uses specially selected colors and fonts, or support for
assistive tools such as screen readers and braille displays.

A basic checklist that any application should aim for:

- Usability - Usability and user centric design generally lead to more
usable applications, including improvements for people with various
abilities.
- Fonts - Font settings should follow the system/platform. This allows
users to select fonts for readability and increasing the font size.
- Colors - Provide enough contrast and consider the most common cases of
low vision and color blindness. Make sure that the application is usable,
for example, for people with red/green blindness, and don't depend on
colors only.
- Scalable UI - A user interface that works in various sizes and properly
supports different fonts and accommodates size changes.
- Sounds - Do not exclusively rely on sound notifications, provide a visual
alternative when a sound signal is imperative to using the application.
- Spelling - Offer spell checking wherever it makes sense, even when only a
single word is expected.
- Assistive Technology - Support the use of assistive tools (AT). Either
use standard widgets/controls which support ATs out of the box, or make
sure that your custom widgets and controls support accessibility properly.
"""

Does anyone have any experience with building accessible native GUI apps
with something other than Qt?


Most of this a11y (accessibility) information is focused on web apps (that
don't need an installer/updater to quickly respond to security issues):
https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y

On Friday, August 24, 2018, Chris Barker via Python-ideas <
python-ideas at python.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 8:17 AM, Barry Scott <barry at barrys-emacs.org>
> wrote:
>
>> > A graphical "hello world" in QT is only half a dozen or less lines of
>> > code in total, so
>> > meets the simplicity requirement.
>>
>> I think 2 lines is simple, 12 is not really simple, is it?
>>
>
> well, if all you need is a single dialog box with  one or two entry
> fields, then yes, 2-4 lines is better than 12-14 lines -- but a lot.
>
> But if you are building an actual application, I'm not sure that the extra
> ten lines of startup code matters at all. And if those ten lines are
> essentially boilerplate that you can copy and paste from somewhere (Or have
> a gui-builder write for you), then even less so.
>
> That's not to say that the GUI toolkit slike wxPython, PySide, pyGTK
> aren't a bit more complex than they need to be, but much of that complex is
> there to support complex needs.
>
> I do think there is a place for tools that make "the easy stuff easy", but
> make sure that the complex stuff is still possible.
>
> -CHB
>
> --
>
> Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
> Oceanographer
>
> Emergency Response Division
> NOAA/NOS/OR&R            (206) 526-6959   voice
> 7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
> Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception
>
> Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
>
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