Matt Campbell

Software developer, formerly at Microsoft, now co-developer of the AccessKit open-source project (https://accesskit.dev/) and cofounder of Pneuma Solutions (https://pneumasolutions.com/). My current favorite programming language is Rust, but I don't want to make that part of my identity.

Music lover. Karaoke singer. Science fiction fan. Legally blind. Secular humanist

Pronouns: he/him
GitHub: https://github.com/mwcampbell

Last Notes

2025-06-19 13:34:59 UTC

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Take note, @npub19yg…w8um: Your claim that the developers of Wayland-based desktop environments, specifically GNOME and KDE, don't care about accessibility is plainly false, and I dare say irresponsible considering the platform you have as a journalist. To be clear, I'm not offended for my own sake. I'm angry for how that article has affected developers who have done far more for free desktop accessibility, e.g. https://tesk.page/2025/06/18/its-true-we-dont-care-about-accessibility-on-linux/

2025-06-19 13:08:09 UTC

Apparently this is slightly old news (the Git commit timestamp is just over three months ago), but KWin, the KDE window manager/compositor, now implements the solution pioneered by GNOME for letting screen readers monitor and intercept keystrokes on Wayland, specifically, the org.freedesktop.a11y.KeyboardMonitor D-Bus interface. I prototyped this solution in GNOME last summer. Thanks to @npub1hl6…hych for bringing it to production in GNOME, and now to Nicolas Fella for implementing it in KDE.

2025-05-01 13:20:43 UTC

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Probably concern about support for proprietary stuff on either side of the OS, meaning hardware and applications. Winner-take-all feedback loops are hard to beat.

2025-03-14 15:08:48 UTC

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I'd be lying, though, if I said I didn't feel some anxiety about the future of my own career. But you and I are in a better place than most, because we both have specialties; yours is web performance, and mine is accessibility.

2024-08-31 15:00:44 UTC

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Yes, and there's a subtle difference between "The solution is [describe solution]" and "The solution is called [proper noun]". It may be the case that the proper noun is the only thing that (currently) implements the described solution, but it still matches a pattern that has negative associations for some. Perhaps I was overly sensitive, but I'm sure I'm not the only one, so I thought it was something worth keeping in mind.

2024-08-31 12:13:32 UTC

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> The solution is called Rust.
I use and like Rust, but such a definitive statement ("the solution") does sound uncomfortably like religious propaganda (e.g. "Jesus is the answer"). Just saying we have to be careful about how we advocate for Rust, which is indeed a useful tool.

2024-08-31 10:06:31 UTC

About my last boost from @npub1d88…57ex, this makes me ashamed to consider myself part of the Rust community, especially since some of the comments he quoted in the thread were posted in places where the Rust code of conduct are allegedly in force (that is, it's not just Reddit and Hacker News). We've got a problem with tribalism in our community. I know it's not up to me to police the community, but still, what can we do about this?

2024-08-18 20:22:52 UTC

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Is that running Mutter or some other Wayland compositor?

2024-06-18 11:14:22 UTC

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I'm curious if you've tested any of these apps with Newton yet.

2024-06-17 11:59:30 UTC

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I did see that post. In the accessible name calculation used by the GTK AT-SPI backend, the decision to walk the subtree for some roles (like buttons) but not others (list items) seems to be deliberate. I don't know why. The GTK AccessKit backend is using AccessKit's own name calculation, which currently doesn't walk the subtree for list items either, but I could easily change that.

2024-06-17 11:36:30 UTC

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Thanks. So then, if I remember correctly, the only issue you're having with Fractal now is the lack of expanded state on the tree items, right?

2024-06-16 21:24:46 UTC

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The next time you update, it's crucial that you update newton_atspi_compat (again from the newton_consumer repo), the AccessKit C bindings, and GTK all at the same time, and restart any running GTK 4 apps using the AccessKit backend before you restart Orca. I made a protocol-breaking change. Also, labels now have the correct role.
I'll look at your other reports later. Thanks again.

2024-06-16 16:32:21 UTC

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I think I got flat review working correctly. Please pull the latest update to the newton_consumer repo and rebuild and reinstall the newton_atspi_compat Python package from there.

2024-06-16 15:17:28 UTC

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Those differences between the Arch Linux GTK package and my version when using atspi are weird, because, as of a few days ago, my branch is based on GTK 4.14.4, with few modifications to GTK outside of the AccessKit backend itself.

2024-06-16 11:50:11 UTC

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Please try my latest Orca update and let me know if it improves flat review for you.

2024-06-16 10:31:24 UTC

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Please rebuild the newton_atspi_compat Python package from the newton_consumer repository here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/mwcampbell/newton_consumer
I moved the package so the low-level and high-level Newton consumer crates are consolidated in one repo. And since doing that move, I've pushed a couple of important fixes. Yes, I've updated my Orca README.

2024-06-15 23:07:37 UTC

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Hi, thanks a lot for building and testing.
Yes, the GTK AccessKit branch is already working on Windows. And it shouldn't be hard to make it work on macOS; I just have to write a bit of platform-specific code and figure out how to build on that platform.
I need to look into the first two bug reports. As for the third one, about stopping and restarting Orca, I think that's actually the same issue I'm working on right now.

2024-05-17 21:34:21 UTC

I recorded a quick demo of the current state of the Wayland-native accessibility stack I'm developing for @npub1dug…kxeq (and eventually other free desktops), code-named Newton. In the demo, I run the GNOME Podcasts app on the Newton accessibility stack, using my GTK branch that integrates AccessKit. So in principle, the same app should also work on Windows, and soon, macOS. The demo was featured in the latest edition of This Week in GNOME: https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2024/05/twig-148/ This work is funded by @npub1yng…nhrk.