Accessibility with in GUI apps.

[Donavin97]

Good day SeisComP comunity,
I am Donavin, a blind seismologist, who has been working with SeisComP for a while now.
Because of my visual impairement, I rely heavily on the automatic processing capeabilities of SeisComP.
However, I found myself wanting to relocate events manually, and having some difficulty.

The issue at hand.

The GUI of scolv is accessible to a screen reader, to some extent, but not all the elements are. An example would be the picker view. I have since added a couple of changes, which allow the station list (traces) to be scrolable via the keyboard, and having speech feedback. There are, however other issues that are going to be challenging to fix, E.G.: 1. Adding information as one scroles through each trace, such as pick residuals, phase markers etc. 2. Actually picking on the correct P onset is almost impossible, because there is no way to tell the screen reader where a trace has a spike. 3. Picking on residuals alone, might lead to eronious results.

If anyone has any input regarding this issue, it would greatly be appreciated.
My final goal is to use the picker at least like sited seismologists can.
Thanks everyone.
Here is the code I added to the picker view to make the stations visible to Gnome Orca, the screen reader I use.

starting from lines 759

        SC_D.ui.labelStationCode->setText(streamID.stationCode().c_str());
        SC_D.ui.labelStationCode->setAccessibleName(streamID.stationCode().c_str());
        SC_D.ui.labelStationCode->setTextInteractionFlags(Qt::TextBrowserInteraction);
        SC_D.ui.labelCode->setText(QString("%1  %2%3")
                                .arg(streamID.networkCode().c_str(),
                                     streamID.locationCode().c_str(),
                                     cha.c_str()));
        /*
        const RecordSequence* seq = SC_D.currentRecord->records();
        if ( seq && !seq->empty() )
                SC_D.ui.labelCode->setText((*seq->begin())->streamID().c_str());
        else
                SC_D.ui.labelCode->setText("NO DATA");
        */

I hope this could be of use in trying to improve accessibility for SeisComP!
Thanks everyone.

[jsaul]

Hi @Donavin97, I really appreciate your opening this issue even though I feel totally helpless here.

Accessibility in a mostly visual tool like the scolv picker seems like a huge challenge. But on the other hand you do program Python, in which the program is structured using indentation, which I find also very "visual". But you obviously manage to deal with it, which is really impressive.

So if there is a way to make scolv accessible for blind people, that would be awesome and I would do what I can to support this. But you need to guide this effort...

[Donavin97]

Hi, Thanks for the interest. I have allready had success in making the trace list accessible. @Jabe and I, are working on an audio picker, which will emit a tone of about 660 HZ for a flat trace and noise, and when an onset is detected, P or S, the tone will go up, corresponding with the onset of a phase. This will happen as one moves through the trace with the arrows or mouse. There will, of course, be a shortcut to toggal the audio, for those who won't need this. This, will, of course not be as accurate as visual phase picking, but I feel this is a step in the right direction. Please, if anyone has any questions, suggestions, or feedback, do share them here.

…

On Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 06:30:55AM -0700, Joachim Saul wrote: jsaul left a comment (SeisComP/common#164) Hi @Donavin97, I really appreciate your opening this issue even though I feel totally helpless here. Accessibility in a mostly visual tool like the scolv picker seems like a huge challenge. But on the other hand you do program Python, in which the program is structured using indentation, which I find also very "visual". But you obviously manage to deal with it, which is really impressive. So if there is a way to make scolv accessible for blind people, that would be awesome and I would do what I can to support this. But you need to guide this effort... -- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #164 (comment) You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Message ID: ***@***.***>

-- ### South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO GEODESY) at Hartebees Hoek Observatory. Seismologist, data scientist. Email: ***@***.*** Phone: (+27) (78 794 2990) links: https://www.sarao.ac.za https://www.hartrao.ac.za ###