[fpc-devel] Fwd: New Issue: Accessibility Declarations for FreePascal

[tsiegel at softcon.com]

I can't answer your question directly, but what I can tell you is that 
the last time I tried to use lazarius, (which admittedly was several 
years ago), it wasn't the least bit accessible.  Screen readers pick up 
on these elements to know what's visible on the screen, and what's an 
roll for screen reader use only, such as a label for a visible element.  
I have mentioned that lazarus IDE is not accessible multiple times in 
the past, and yet, nobody seems to be interested in doing anything about 
it.  Perhaps this question will shed some light on the reasons why it 
isn't accessible.

Or, for all I know, it's 100 percent accessible, because someone fixed 
it, but I find that generally, if an application is not accessible, that 
rarely changes just from standard work on it.  99 percent of the time, 
the application remains inaccessible, because nonstandard controls are 
used, or accessibility rolls are not coded on the nonstandard controls 
that are used, usually both.

I'm guessing if someone were to investigate, the difference between the 
two things you're asking might actually be more than is currently 
expected, but then again, depending on terminology, I could be 
completely wrong, and the things that are being discussed have nothing 
at all to do with accessibility, wouldn't be the first time terms have 
gotten mixed up when trying to solve accessibility issues.

On 10/19/2026 4:38 PM, Martin Frb via fpc-devel wrote:
> Can someone comment on this?
>
> Do we have C-like distinction between access and visible?
>
> I would think not?
>
> If you can access it you can see it, and vice versa?
> I can't think of any other case (i.e. where an identifier would be 
> hidden by something that you can't access like in the example below)
>
> We do have the reverse, that a public property/function can expose a 
> private type (but not the name of the type, just its "content" 
> (enum/members))
>
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>
> 	
>
> 	
>
> 	
>
> 	
>
> 	
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>
>
> Martin,
>
> Last week, while we were discussing the FreePascal accessibility 
> declarations, I began to wonder whether the private/strict 
> private/protected/strict protected keywords really were accessibility 
> values or visibility values.  In the reference manual, it uses both 
> terms interchangeably.  It says, "The visibility of the different 
> sections is...", but then in the text for each value, it uses verbiage 
> like "can be accessed".  In C++, there are situtations where 
> visibility vs. accessibility is an important distinction.  My go-to to 
> expose this is hiding rules.  For example:
>
>     int foo = 1;
>
>     class C {
>     private:
>        int  foo {2};
>     };
>
>     class D : public C {
>     public:
>        void func()
>        {
>           // illegal because C::foo is visible here, but not accessible.
>           // Because C::foo is visible, it hides ::foo.
>           std::cout << foo << '\n';
>        }
>     };
>
> Or another example:
>
>     class C {
>     public:
>        int foo { 1 };
>     };
>
>     class D : public C {
>     private:
>        int foo { 2 };
>     };
>
>     int main()
>     {
>        D  obj;
>        // illegal because D::foo is visible here, but not accessible.
>        // Because D::foo is visible here, it hides C::foo.
>        std::cout << obj.foo << '\n';
>     }
>
> My question is: In FreePascal, are there situations like this where 
> the private/strict private/protected/strict protected names can hide 
> other names at global scope?  Or at any "outer" scope, for that 
> matter, if these constructs can be declared arbitrarily nested within 
> other constructs, like in Ada.  If they all can hide names, to my 
> mind, that rules out using visibility as any part of the description.  
> Instead, if none of them can hide other names, then perhaps all of 
> them should be visibility values instead.  Or, if it's impossible to 
> construct an example in FreePascal that can tell the difference, then 
> perhaps I'm just splitting hairs.  :)
>
> Regards,
> Todd Allen
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> fpc-devel maillist  -fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org
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