Hello,

tl;dr what accessibility API does Lyx have? Is it IAccessible2 API?
(I tried asking this in a couple other locations including the general
users list but have not heard back)

I am currently working with a couple others on a system for writing math by
voice in Lyx (and regular latex) as an accessibility tool for people (like
me) with hand problems, and potentially as a productivity tool for the
general population (though the latter will take some more work for sure).
Please see my demonstration of doing math by voice in Lyx here (the
beginning is a little shaky so please give it a chance):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-iHvPmjcas
The code for doing this and much more information and demos is now
available here thanks to Mike Roberts, the main developer behind this:
https://github.com/mrob95/mathfly

Dragon (the world’s leading voice recognition software, sold by Nuance) is
especially powerful in certain applications – those applications in which
Dragon is said to have “full text control” (sometimes also called
“Select-and-Say”). Currently, Lyx is not one of those applications, but I
would like it to be which is the main purpose of this email (see below).
Microsoft Word is a full text control application. Here is a demonstration
of me using some of the features made possible by full text control in
Microsoft Word:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kyO6KVMbuw&feature=youtu.be

James at handsfreecoding.org has made some progress on extending full text
control to more applications. His blog post discusses the issue with far
more expertise than I have. (for our purposes here the 2nd half of the the
blog post is probably most important):
http://handsfreecoding.org/2018/12/27/enhanced-text-manipulation-using-accessibility-apis/

According to the blog post, an important requirement at the moment for
making full text control work in an application is that the application in
question use the accessibility API called IAccessible2 API, see:
https://accessibility.linuxfoundation.org/a11yspecs/ia2/docs/html/
Linux AT-SPI API may become supported eventually for full text control but
this has not happened yet.

My purpose in this email is to ask whether Lyx has the proper accessibility
API to support full text control? What accessibility API does Lyx have? If
Lyx does not have one of the APIs mentioned above, is there a latex editor
that has those APIs? Since I’m a very beginner programmer I don't
understand this with any depth, but if necessary I will pass on whatever
you tell me to more sophisticated users in the voice community with the
hope that they can help me make full text control work in Lyx (or less
ideally in another latex editor). Unfortunately, I seem to be one of very
very few people out there working on math-by-voice right now. By contrast,
there are a decent number of people working on voice programming (i.e.
coding).

thank you very much,
Alex

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