I am Nalin from kerala/India, In 2014 i had a discussion with XBoard Development Team regarding the enhancement of XBoard and implementing accessibility as well. The team members H.G. Muller and Arun Persaud found the project relevant and worth implementing. If needed I can forward the discussion we had through the mailing list. Our final plan was as follows
Plan
##1 - Port XBoard-GTK to GTK3 : - Port the GenericPopUp in xoption.c (placed in gtk dir), which create main window and all dialog's such as ICS text menu, matchOptions, variantDescriptors, commonEngineOptions, adjudicationOptions, icsOptions, loadOptions, saveOptions, soundOptions,boardOptions,textOptions, ...etc.
##2 - Make XBoard accessible for visually impaired : -
Section - 1
1 - Set proper tooltips for each widgets and menu items
2 - Set newmonic widget for each label with corresponding widgets such as spin button, text entry, combo-box etc.
3 - Set accelerators for switch between the various windows(Main,Message,etc.).
Section - 2
4 - Make a general SayString() for XBoard to send messages to screen reader. Separate function definition for Linux, Windows and Mac OS. use the same way for windows (like in jaws.c) , for linux (orca) this function will set a newmonic label so orca will announce the label updated by SayString().
5 - Create Menu item for announcing all peace position,all white peace positions,all black peace position..etc via SayString().
6 - Make screen reader to announce each peace with coordinate while navigating using arrow keys(via SayString()). For example "A1 White Rook" when up arrow pressed it will announce "A2 White pawn" etc.
7 - Creating check menu items that enable high contrast theme for XBoard which would make persons with low vision to play XBoard without any difficulty.
Add extra features like clock tick sound which would make user more comfortable.
##3 - Make GTK version available for Windows and Mac OS : -
Since both cairo and Gtk3 are available for Windows and Mac OS this can be done easily.
the major work in this module will be porting os depended code such as launching new instance of XBoard from existing,Storing the config file etc.