Coding Guidelines for Supporting Accessibility

Here are some things you can do in your code to make your program work as well as possible with assistive technologies.

• For components that don’t display a short string (such as an image button), specify a name for it by setting the GTK_ACCESSIBLE_PROPERTY_LABEL. You might want to do this for image-only buttons, panels that provide logical groupings, text areas, and so on.

• If you can’t provide a tooltip for an UI element, use GTK_ACCESSIBLE_PROPERTY_DESCRIPTION instead to provide a description that assistive technologies can give the user. For example, to provide an accessible description for a Close button:

  gtk_accessible_update_property (GTK_ACCESSIBLE (button),
                                  GTK_ACCESSIBLE_PROPERTY_DESCRIPTION,
                                  _("Closes the window"),
                                  -1);
  

• If several components form a logical group, try to put them in one container.

• Whenever you have a label that describes another component, use the GTK_ACCESSIBLE_RELATION_LABELLED_BY relation:

  gtk_accessible_update_relation (GTK_ACCESSIBLE (text_entry),
                                  GTK_ACCESSIBLE_RELATION_LABELLED_BY,
                                    label, NULL,
                                  -1);
  

• If you create a custom widget, make sure it supports accessibility. Custom components that are descendants of other GTK widgets should override inherited accessibility information as necessary.

• Don’t break what you get for free! If your application has an inaccessible container, any components inside that container may become inaccessible.