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OpenCharly

a11y-tools

Recipe card from the charly-selkies plugin (Images — the deployable catalog).

a11y-tools - AT-SPI2 Accessibility Introspection

Section titled “a11y-tools - AT-SPI2 Accessibility Introspection”

Overview

Section titled “Overview”

Provides Python AT-SPI2 bindings for querying the accessibility tree of GTK, Qt, and Chrome applications. Enables element-based automation — find buttons, menus, and text fields by name/role instead of pixel coordinates.

Used by the wl: atspi verb.

Candy Definition

Section titled “Candy Definition”
require:
  - dbus


rpm:
  packages:
    - python3-pyatspi
    - python3-gobject

Key Properties

Section titled “Key Properties”
Property Value
Depends dbus (AT-SPI2 requires D-Bus session bus)
Packages python3-pyatspi, python3-gobject
Python Uses /usr/bin/python3 (system Python 3.14, NOT pixi’s Python 3.13)

Important: System Python Required

Section titled “Important: System Python Required”

The RPM packages install to system Python (/usr/bin/python3). Containers with pixi environments have pixi’s python3 first in PATH, but pixi’s python3 doesn’t see system RPM packages. The wl: atspi verb explicitly uses /usr/bin/python3 to ensure AT-SPI2 bindings are found.

What You Can Query

Section titled “What You Can Query”
  • tree — Full accessibility tree (app name, window title, widget name/role/position/actions)
  • find — Search by name, role, or name:role pattern
  • click — Find an element and invoke its click/press/activate action

Chrome Accessibility

Section titled “Chrome Accessibility”

Chrome needs --force-renderer-accessibility flag to expose DOM elements via AT-SPI2. The labwc/autostart in selkies-desktop includes this flag.

Included In

Section titled “Included In”
  • selkies-desktop metalayer

Used In Boxes

Section titled “Used In Boxes”

Testing Notes

Section titled “Testing Notes”
  • python3-pyatspi installs under the system /usr/lib/python3.X/ site-packages/, NOT pixi’s Python 3.13 env (which dominates PATH). Declarative tests must use the absolute path /usr/bin/python3 -c "import pyatspi"; a bare python3 invocation resolves to pixi’s python and fails with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pyatspi'. See /charly-check:check Authoring Gotchas #7 (no bash defaults) and #8 (system vs pixi Python).
Section titled “Related Skills”