protonscr

Steam on Linux: the entire client is totally inaccessible for blind users on any distro.

steamopen Steam client
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#9911 · opened 2023-07-26 by francescotissera1211 · updated 2024-12-12 · 3 comments · github
Ffrancescotissera1211 2023-07-26 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): I have no idea, since the client cannot be navigated with a screen reader.
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): ArchLinux
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No]: no
  • Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No]: yes
  • Steam Logs: [generate by running this command in a terminal tar -zcvf ~/Desktop/steam-logs.tar.gz ~/.steam/steam/logs]
  • GPU: Nvidia/Intel/AMD: AMD

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Describe what you expected should happen and what did happen. Please link any large code pastes as a Github Gist
As soon as installation finishes and the client is opened, said client's interface is not accessible at all with the Orca screenreader.
Tabbing around, arrowing around or trying to navigate in any way results in no speech from the screenreader.
This results in a blind user not being able to use the steam client at all on Linux to play both native and proton compatible games.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. install Steam with sudo pacman -S steam.
  2. turn on the screen reader and open the client.
  3. try to navigate around. You might get the steam runtime content updating screen to be seen by Orca, but that will be it.
Kkisak-valve maintainer 2023-10-30 github

Noted on #10178, this improved for a while, but functionally regressed before the October 25th Steam client update.

Llilmike 2023-10-31 github

Yes, the public beta was accessible for a while, but now regressed to being inaccessible.

-Michael.

RRealAmethyst 2024-12-12 github

Tested this extensivly these last few days. I've tried running this with steam_runtime=0 and other veriables, with no result. The flatpak version of steam is fully accessible using Orca, so I have no idea what's going on there. Could someone check what's different and port it over to the native client? I'm running Arch btw.

Nothing extracted yet.