[pygtk] accessibility mystery

[Dusty Phillips]

Hello,

I've been searching everywhere for information on utilizing
accessibility information provided by GTK programs. I'd rather do this
in Python and PyGTK, which is why I'm posting here.

I've found loads of information on 'how to make your program more
accessible'. (eg: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/guide/gad/  
<-- old)This is the stuff on how to ensure your widgets and components
will play nicely with accessibility software like screen readers and
the like.

However, the thing I can't find out is how I can write software that
reads and manipulates this accessible information. How does a screen
reader talk to a standard PyGTK app to access and manipulate its
widgets, for example?  I've found the ATK API (eg:
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/atk/atk.html), so I think I can
figure out how to work with it IF I had a simple example of how to get
started accessing an existing program. Does such an example exist?

It seems like very little work has gone into accessibility in the past
couple years. Java's accessibility utilities were last updated for
Java 1.3, and Gnomes accessibility pages don't appear to have been
updated recently either. Have I missed some very obvious recent
updates or something? I'm getting the feeling maybe accessibility was
driven by Sun a few years back and they ran out of money. :-D

I guess that was all just a long-winded way of saying 'can somebody
tell me how to write a pygtk program that can access existing gtk
applications through their accessibility API?' Sorry for the
wordiness.

Thanks in advance for any tips or links,

Dusty