chatdlg: replace QTextBrowser with QListView for screen reader accessibility by mcfnord · Pull Request #3748 · jamulussoftware/jamulus

mcfnord · 2026-06-20T17:43:27Z

Replaces `QTextBrowser` with `QListView` + `QStyledItemDelegate` in the chat dialog so that each message is a discrete item in the OS accessibility tree.

With `QTextBrowser`, VoiceOver (and other screen readers that consume `QAccessible`) sees the entire chat history as a single text block. With `QListView`, each appended message becomes a `QAccessible::ListItem`, letting the user arrow-key through individual messages.

`ChatDelegate` renders each item as HTML via `QTextDocument`, preserving the existing rich-text formatting. Link clicks are detected in `eventFilter` by installing a filter on the viewport (mouse events in `QListView` go to the viewport child widget, not the view itself) and using `QTextDocument::documentLayout()->anchorAt()` to hit-test the click position. Hovering over a link shows a pointing-hand cursor. Clicking routes through the existing `OnAnchorClicked` confirmation dialog. Right-click or Ctrl+C copies the selected message's plain text to the clipboard.

Link clicks have been confirmed working on Windows, perhaps on Linux. Does VoiceOver read individual messages as expected on macOS?

Fixes an issue?

Addresses #3613.

Does this change need documentation? What needs to be documented and how?

No documentation changes needed.

Status of this Pull Request

Builds and runs. Not tested on macOS. does VoiceOver navigate individual messages?

I don't see pointer cursor on hover; probably worth investigating.

Checklist

I've verified that this Pull Request follows the general code principles
I tested my code and it does what I want... but does it do things I don't want?
My code follows the style guide
I waited some time after this Pull Request was opened and all GitHub checks completed without errors.

pljones · 2026-06-20T17:55:31Z

Thanks - we've been looking to get more of the assistive side of Jamulus fixed.

Could you also provide screenshots (ideally with some rich HTML text - and welcome messages) and a comparative walk through of use with the existing interface - not just for screen-reader use but generally.

-- Peter

mcfnord · 2026-06-20T18:12:44Z

I found a problem with this approach (links not clickable) but Claude says it's fixable. I agree that we'd need to assure any visual changes are unimportant. My hope is that the only useability difference is arguably an improvement: you can copy the whole line rather than pieces of it, but no copy of multiple lines anymore. This is a more common pattern in tools like Slack.

ann0see · 2026-06-20T19:08:41Z

    // set a placeholder text to make sure where to type the message in (#384)
    edtLocalInputText->setPlaceholderText ( tr ( "Type a message here" ) );

+    // Set up the list model and delegate for accessible per-message rows ------


Suggested change

// Set up the list model and delegate for accessible per-message rows ------

// Set up the list model and delegate for accessible per-message rows

Check for AI artifacts like this.

ann0see

Tested locally on linux and there is a slight difference. I'd be interested what happens if you send broken html form the server side (e.g. a broken welcome message).

Each chat message is now a discrete QListView row rendered by a QStyledItemDelegate, exposing it to the OS accessibility tree as a QAccessible::ListItem. VoiceOver can arrow-key through individual messages instead of treating the whole history as one text block. Right-click or Ctrl+C copies the selected message's plain text to the clipboard. Link clicks are detected via the event filter and routed to the existing confirmation dialog. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Mouse events in QListView go to the viewport child widget, not the view itself. The event filter was installed only on the view, so MouseButtonPress was never caught. Install on viewport() too and check obj == viewport() for mouse events. Also adds MouseMove handling to show PointingHandCursor over links. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

mcfnord · 2026-06-20T19:59:36Z

Tested locally on linux and there is a slight difference. I'd be interested what happens if you send broken html form the server side (e.g. a broken welcome message).

I want a Mac user to test with VoiceOver!

dingodoppelt · 2026-06-21T17:59:46Z

Do @chigkim or @OnjLouis have anything to add to this maybe?

ann0see · 2026-06-21T18:09:45Z

I tried it on macOS but could not succeed to tab inside the chat message. It also did not speak once i clicked onto the message. so it didn't fix it unfortunately.

I think that we probably need to resructure the UI anyway. It should probably be restructured such that it works like modern messengers.

Currently translated at 15.6% (109 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/ru/

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Satisfies compiler warnings on macOS

Co-authored-by: ann0see <20726856+ann0see@users.noreply.github.com>

For geo redundancy, latency and since Any Genre 3 is not heavily used, we introduce a directory in Asia. See jamulussoftware#3692

The default constructor leaves a member uninitialised, and is not needed.

jamulus.app has a better future than jamulus.io due to political reasons. Thus, the infrastructure was already now moved to jamulus.app

…er events Two issues prevented VoiceOver from speaking on macOS: 1. Qt::DisplayRole stored raw HTML; VoiceOver read the string verbatim (angle-bracket markup), yielding silence or garbled output. Fix: strip HTML via QTextDocument::toPlainText() and store the result as Qt::AccessibleTextRole on each item — the role QAccessible queries for the item's accessible name. 2. The previous QAccessibleValueChangeEvent fired before HTML processing and targeted the whole widget with unprocessed text. Replace with QAccessibleTableModelChangeEvent::RowsInserted (correct signal for a new list row) followed by QAccessibleValueChangeEvent carrying the plain text — this drives VoiceOver's live-region-style announcement of incoming messages on macOS. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

mcfnord · 2026-06-22T19:19:33Z

Updated with two fixes targeting the macOS VoiceOver silence:

Fix 1 — Qt::AccessibleTextRole (root cause of "didn't speak")

Qt::DisplayRole stores the raw HTML string. VoiceOver reads this role directly — it sees angle-bracket markup and either reads garbled text or says nothing. The fix: after HTML processing, extract plain text with QTextDocument::toPlainText() and store it as Qt::AccessibleTextRole on each item. VoiceOver reads AccessibleTextRole first when naming a list item, so it now gets clean text when the user navigates to a row.

Fix 2 — QAccessibleTableModelChangeEvent::RowsInserted + corrected QAccessibleValueChangeEvent (live-region-style announcement)

The previous QAccessibleValueChangeEvent fired before HTML processing and before the row was even appended — it carried unprocessed text and referenced the whole widget at the wrong moment. Replaced with:

QAccessibleTableModelChangeEvent::RowsInserted targeting the exact row — tells the AT stack a new list item exists.
QAccessibleValueChangeEvent with the plain text, fired after appendRow — this is what drives VoiceOver to announce an incoming message without requiring the user to navigate to it.

Whether (2) produces true live-region auto-announcement on macOS depends on VoiceOver's policy for list widgets, but it's the correct signal sequence; the previous approach was definitely wrong.

mcfnord · 2026-06-22T19:25:01Z

this conflict thing seems so extra... i think i'll make a new PR

ann0see reviewed Jun 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

jrd and others added 2 commits June 20, 2026 19:51

mcfnord force-pushed the chatdlg-listview-accessibility branch from 2766b96 to dde15e4 Compare June 20, 2026 19:52

softins and others added 20 commits June 22, 2026 19:18

Increase accepted length of version

8b1c97a

Translated using Weblate (Russian)

8df8ac8

Currently translated at 15.6% (109 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/ru/

Build: Bump NSIS from 3.11 to 3.12

0fa055f

Update ChangeLog with missing entries

c78cf18

Update .ts files for r3.12.0rc1

1a8599a

Update version to 3.12.0rc1 for release

bdfcd86

Set version to 3.11.0dev

6fee5ad

Revert ChangeLog to 3.11.0dev

fd2f3df

Use Q_OS_BSD4 to fix FreeBSD IPv6 like macOS

618c585

Handle differences between macOS and FreeBSD

06b8035

Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))

4d38f02

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))

af13ade

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))

29bc01c

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))

162c795

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))

54d61d5

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))

a0a4e67

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Translated using Weblate (Portuguese (Brazil))

f29a4f5

Currently translated at 100.0% (696 of 696 strings) Translation: Jamulus/Jamulus app Translate-URL: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/jamulus/jamulus-app/pt_BR/

Add missing override specifiers

c752136

Satisfies compiler warnings on macOS

Update ChangeLog for upcoming release

773a459

Update version to 3.12.0 for release

f51bb3b

ann0see and others added 19 commits June 22, 2026 19:18

Set version to 3.12.0dev

3899cf1

Optimize images

41d7973

Co-authored-by: ann0see <20726856+ann0see@users.noreply.github.com>

Fix deprecation of result_of in C++17

86ffb07

Do not do update checks while connect dialog open

314dfa6

Update ChangeLog and Jamulus.pro for 3.12.1 release

6cec57c

Set version to 3.12.1dev

6926e0a

Set version to 3.12.1dev

be5ddb8

make server version string searchable

9257970

Introduce Asian directory server

6ea789b

For geo redundancy, latency and since Any Genre 3 is not heavily used, we introduce a directory in Asia. See jamulussoftware#3692

Add 16-bit PCM uncompressed audio transmission

144f244

Add RAW_SUPPORTED protocol message and refactor client and server code

52848bf

make raw audio optional at server

daf9c9f

Remove unused default constructor to fix AI finding

8ce1610

The default constructor leaves a member uninitialised, and is not needed.

Fix wrongly mentioned changelog entry (jamulussoftware#3707)

c145684

Fix some typos found by AI review

c8b08cd

Default reported OS to Unix if not Linux (e.g. FreeBSD)

606dfb7

Move update checks and directories to jamulus.app

3e3facb

jamulus.app has a better future than jamulus.io due to political reasons. Thus, the infrastructure was already now moved to jamulus.app

Rename CENTSERV_ to DIR_ADDR_

09631e7

mcfnord closed this Jun 22, 2026

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chatdlg: replace QTextBrowser with QListView for screen reader accessibility#3748

chatdlg: replace QTextBrowser with QListView for screen reader accessibility#3748
mcfnord wants to merge 41 commits into
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mcfnord:chatdlg-listview-accessibility

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