GNOME Calendar: A New Era of Accessibility Achieved in 90 Days

There is no calendaring app that I love more than GNOME Calendar. The design is slick, it works extremely well, it is touchpad friendly, and best of all, the community around it is just full of wonderful developers, designers, and contributors worth collaborating with, especially with the recent community growth and engagement over the past few years. Georges Stavracas and Jeff Fortin Tam are some of the best maintainers I have ever worked with, especially Jeff’s underappreciated superhuman capabilities to voluntarily coordinate huge initiatives and issue trackers. One of many Jeff’s initiatives is gnome-calendar#1036: the accessibility initiative. It is a big and detailed list of issues related to accessibility, and regularly gets updated. The upcoming release of GNOME, 49, will feature the biggest update GNOME Calendar has ever received (excluding the initial release). It will also be the accessibility update, where we managed to turn GNOME Calendar from an app that was literally unusable with a keyboard and assistive technology, to an app that is actually functional with a keyboard and screen reader in about three months. This article will explain in details about the fundamental issues that held back accessibility in GNOME Calendar since the very beginning of its existence, the progress we have made with accessibility as well as our thought process in achieving it, and the now and future of accessibility in GNOME Calendar.