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Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface
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<p>Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface (AT-SPI) is a platform-neutral framework for providing bi-directional communication between <a href="/facts/Assistive_technologies/xYdAXG3y">assistive technologies</a> (AT) and applications. It is the <i>de facto</i> standard for providing accessibility to free and open desktops, like Linux or OpenBSD, led by the <a href="/facts/GNOME_project/DATrJNtU">GNOME Project</a>. </p><p>One common nomenclature to explain an accessibility framework is a usual client-server architecture. In that way, <a href="/facts/Assistive_technology/xYdAXG3y">Assistive Technologies</a> (ATs), such as <a href="/facts/Screen_readers/Twune61n">screen readers</a>, would be the clients of that framework, and computer applications would be the server. In this architecture, client and server need to communicate with each other, usually using the <a href="/facts/Inter-process_communication/cIQYyT6y">IPC</a> technology of the platform. Ideally the accessibility framework exposes this to the client and server in a transparent way. </p><p>Usually the API for both client-side and server-side applications are the same, and the accessibility framework provides a client-side and a server-side implementation of that API. In the case of GNOME, there are two different APIs, one for the client-side (AT-SPI) and a different one for the server-side (<a href="/facts/Accessibility_Toolkit/RlfamIY0">Accessibility Toolkit</a> (ATK)) due to historical reasons related to the underlying technologies. </p>