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feat(ui): have VoiceOver announce changes made away from the focus - #30

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Timtam:mainfrom
math65:feat/voiceover-announcements
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math65 wants to merge 2 commits into
Timtam:mainfrom
math65:feat/voiceover-announcements

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@math65 math65 commented Sep 25, 2026

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Stacked on #29 (it reuses the voiceover module added there), so this shows both commits until that one lands.

What changed

VoiceOver reads a control's new label or state only when the user moves to it, so three things RABBIT changes on its own went unheard on macOS. Each is now announced:

  • Dropdowns below the packages list. Ticking a language pack shows the REAPER-language dropdown (or the Spanish variant one), off to the side of the row the user is on. Now: "New choice below the list: REAPER language after installation." / "Choice removed: …".
  • Install progress. The status line moves from package to package while focus sits on the log. The start of each install and configuration step is now spoken, politely (it waits for current speech). Download lines are deliberately not spoken, as they change several times a second.
  • A failed version check. The status line changes while focus stays on the gauge, so the user had no way to hear that the page is now waiting for Back or Close.

The announcement helper gains a priority: the answer to a key press interrupts, news the user didn't ask for waits. A Space toggle folds its dropdown news into its own "Checked" announcement, because a second announcement would cut the first off. A click or VO+Space, which VoiceOver already reads back, gets the dropdown news on its own, after it.

New locale keys in all five languages. On anything other than macOS, announce does nothing.

Testing

Validated on macOS with VoiceOver (fr-FR): dropdowns appearing and disappearing through Space and VO+Space, and a full install run. The version-check failure path compiles, but I couldn't trigger it by hand.

Whether announcements are too chatty is a taste call, so it's easy to drop any one of the three.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

math65 and others added 2 commits September 25, 2026 19:36
On macOS the packages list is a wxDataViewCtrl whose checkbox column only
changes on a click. VoiceOver sends one for VO+Space while interacting with
the list, but a plain Space reached no handler at all, so a keyboard user
could not tick anything (Timtam#28).

Space on the selected row now runs the same toggle as a click: the
model's set_value body moved into a shared closure that both call, and
the toggle column's state is read through one helper, which also replaces
the four copies of the group aggregate in get_value. Disabled rows are
left alone, as with a click.

A toggle made from code gives VoiceOver nothing to read, because the row
it is on is rebuilt behind it. A small voiceover module posts
NSAccessibilityAnnouncementRequestedNotification with the row's new state
("Checked" / "Unchecked", in all five locales). It uses CoreFoundation's
toll-free bridged types, so no Objective-C runtime calls or new crates.

Fixes Timtam#28

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
VoiceOver reads a control's new label or state only when the user moves to
it, so three things RABBIT changes on its own went unheard on macOS:

- ticking a package can show or hide the REAPER-language and Spanish
  variant dropdowns below the list, off to the side of the row the user
  is on;
- the progress page's status line moves from package to package while
  focus sits on the log;
- a failed version check rewrites the status line while focus stays on
  the gauge.

Each is now announced through the voiceover module added for Space
toggles, which gains a priority: the answer to a key press interrupts,
news the user didn't ask for waits for current speech. Only the start of
each install and configuration step is spoken, not download lines, which
change several times a second. A Space toggle folds its dropdown news
into the same announcement, since a second one would cut the first off;
a click or VO+Space, which VoiceOver already reads back, gets the
dropdown news on its own, politely.

The packages toggle now returns the dropdown lines instead of a bool;
elsewhere than macOS `announce` does nothing.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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