To build a better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. -- Alexander Pierce, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" ATK served us well for nearly 20 years, but the world has changed, and GTK has changed with it. Now ATK is mostly a hindrance towards improving the accessibility stack: - it maps to a very specific implementation, AT-SPI, which is Linux and Unix specific - it requires implementing the same functionality in three different layers of the stack: AT-SPI, ATK, and GTK - only GTK uses it; every other Linux and Unix toolkit and application talks to AT-SPI directly, including assistive technologies Sadly, we cannot incrementally port GTK to a new accessibility stack; since ATK insulates us entirely from the underlying implementation, we cannot replace it piecemeal. Instead, we're going to remove everything and then incrementally build on a clean slate: - add an "accessible" interface, implemented by GTK objects directly, which describe the accessible role and state changes for every UI element - add an "assistive technology context" to proxy a native accessibility API, and assign it to every widget - implement the AT context depending on the platform For more information, see: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2833