Re: [libreoffice-accessibility] libreoffice on the mac

Hi Marco,

thanks for sharing your experience.

I remember Patrick Luby doing various improvements for LibreOffice on 
macOS in recent years, including accessibility related ones, but there's 
certainly more to do, and macOS hasn't been in my focus so far (and 
isn't at the moment).

Looking more closely at the macOS accessibility meta bug now,
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164849 ("MacOS a11y, 
editing: VoiceOver doesn't read text in many documents correctly due to 
inconsistent accessibility tree structure") seems particularly relevant 
when it comes to Writer.

While that's not with primary focus on accessibility, it might be 
relevant that TDF newly hired a macOS developer:
https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/macos-ui-developer-employed/13370

Michael

On 2025-11-21 09:06, Marco Zehe wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> Unfortunately, some of these bugs, which we have already talked about in the past, make editing most 
> documents virtually impossible on the Mac when using VoiceOver. Most of the APIs used probably haven’t 
> been touched since the initial implementation 15-20 years ago, and Apple has since advanced its APIs on 
> the Mac, and VoiceOver’s expectations, massively. I know this from the implementation of MacOS 
> accessibility in Firefox <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/Mac2020>, which I took part of in 
> 2020 and 2021. To make this work properly, someone knowledgeable on the Mac would really need to get down 
> to business and work on this at least for a few months. Most basic controls work okay’s, but the actual 
> text area of Writer is a total mess. And I haven’t even tried to use Calc or Impress.
>
> Sorry for being so blunt, but sadly, that’s the current affair when it comes to LibreOffice 
> accessibility on the Mac. Unfortunately, due to an ongoing illness, I cannot provide anything other 
> than my experience from the Firefox days, and maybe occasional testing of precompiled builds, if 
> someone dedicates their time to working on this. I am not a coder myself, or at least any more.
>
>
> Marco
>
> > Am 17.11.2025 um 10:14 schrieb Michael Weghorn <m.weghorn@posteo.de>:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > in general, LibreOffice implements accessibility on macOS.
> >
> > I'm not actively using macOS myself, so others who do that might be able to give some more insights 
> > on how accessible LibreOffice is there for them in practice.
> >
> > There is a meta bug for macOS-specific accessibility tickets:
> > https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=55571&hide_resolved=1
> >
> > If you run into any other issues, a bug report would be appreciated.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> > On 2025-11-15 15:11, Josh Kennedy wrote:
> > > hi,
> > > How accessible is libreoffice on the mac these days? I am thinking of
> > > getting a mac, and I have important encrypted documents that I use in ODT
> > > format encrypted with the aes-256 encryption. If it is not accessible on
> > > mac, can you please make it so that it is accessible? including writer,
> > > calc, charts in calc and so on? I want to be able to put my ODT files on
> > > the mac and keep working on them and saving them.
> > > thanks
> > > Josh Kennedy
> >
> >
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