Comment by xyzzy_plugh
15 hours ago
No. As much as I would like it to be the case, that is most certainly a poor criteria to evaluate a UI library.
Dear ImGui [0] is without a doubt the most prevalent immediate mode UI library. It does not have native accessibility features, but that hasn't stopped companies such as Intel, Meta, IKEA and Google from shipping products built upon it. It's also used in a ton of games.
Calling Dear ImGui a toy project at this point would be like calling Unreal Engine a toy project.
It's a shame accessibility support is not more widespread, and furthermore it's a shame that it is so laborious to add it.
You've cherry picked a very specific example that is designed to run in 3d engines. For anything rendering at standard OS api level level (the vast majority libs), accessibility is fine as evaluation criteria.
> You've cherry picked a very specific example that is designed to run in 3d engines.
This post is about a minimal immediate mode library made by a game dev, most suitable for debug menus.
It's unreasonable to treat it as a platform for soapboxing about "the vast majority libs" that are unrelated.
OK, if "toy project" isn't the right word, then perhaps, "unethical" or "exclusionary" would be better words to use.
I judge software harshly that could be useful to folks with accessibility needs that don't try to address it (within bounds of their resources and capabilities, obviously lots of OSS just doesn't have the ability to deliver an accessible experience for tiny little throwaway apps). I definitely choose technologies to use based on whether they can be accessible with a little extra effort on my part. I'm not necessarily good at it, it's a complicated topic, but when I get bug reports about an accessibility issue I tend to drop everything else and try to fix it.
I guess a lot of folks consider games exclusively for folks without those accessibility needs, so maybe that's why something like Dear ImGui can live for years in thousands of projects without anyone complaining about accessibility. But, I wouldn't consider it for anything that isn't specifically about graphics and I don't think anyone else should either. (No one has to listen to me, but I think less of them.)
> I guess a lot of folks consider games exclusively for folks without those accessibility needs, so maybe that's why something like Dear ImGui can live for years in thousands of projects without anyone complaining about accessibility. But, I wouldn't consider it for anything that isn't specifically about graphics and I don't think anyone else should either. (No one has to listen to me, but I think less of them.)
Immediate mode UIs are mostly for debug menus, not even gameplay/graphics. It doesn't need to be accessible to anyone except for the developer(s) choosing the library and making the game. (If the developer has different needs, obviously they can choose another library, unlike users who must live with the developer's choice.) The fourth sentence in the linked ImGUI repository explains this intention very clearly.
You can spend all this energy imagining malice and thinking less of others, but doing so does not add merit to your critique. Nor does it advance the cause of software accessibility.