Godot Version
4.4.1
Question
Hi all,
I’d like to ask if there are any plans to make the Godot editor accessible to screen readers such as Jaws for Windows or NVDA. I just downloaded 4.4.1 .net, and from what I can see, screen readers see nothing from the editor, including the very basic starting point of creating a new project. Basic things like entering a project name and browsing for a project directory aren’t even accessible without using OCR features as a work-around, from what I can see. When the engine first opens, standard keyboard controls for interaction with Windows apps that would normally move through controls, e.g., tab and shift+tab, arrows, etc. seem to do nothing. Or if they are actually moving through controls, these must be special custom controls that the screen reader just can’t see; they’re probably just pixelated images, if i had to guess.
I’m a totally blind individual interested in using the engine, but it doesn’t seem doable in its current state. I thought I read somewhere in an older post (either on Reddit or Github; I can’t remember which) that there were plans to improve accessibility moving forward, and I’m just curious about whether that is still the case and whether any strides have been made or are close. I was excited to try after reading the post, and then I was disappointed when I loaded the editor last night for the first time and got absolutely no feedback. OCR provided somewhat of a work-around for the initial screen, but aside from the fact that it’s cumbersome and not always reliable in what it returns, I’ve got serious doubts that it could be used across an entire project.
It would be absolutely amazing if we were able to actually use a game engine like this. Unity is completely inaccessible to us, and I don’t think Unreal is much better. (To be fair, I haven’t tried it, but if their launcher is so inaccessible that I can’t even sign into my account, then that doesn’t bode well for their editor).
So here’s hoping that Godot can break some new ground in this regard. That’d be a fantastic gamechanger.
What I downloaded was the latest stable release, but I’m definitely willing to test if accessibility enhancements are part of dev builds that aren’t officially released. Thanks for any info you can provide.