Bug 481773

Summary: A11y: support a secondary mouse that is never locked into a game engine etc.
Product: [Plasma] kwin Reporter: Henning <boredsquirrel>
Component: inputAssignee: KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status: REPORTED ---    
Severity: wishlist CC: duha.bugs, nate
Priority: NOR Keywords: accessibility
Version First Reported In: master   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: unspecified   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Henning 2024-02-24 15:10:56 UTC 
In the interview of Brodie Robertson with AcidLight, a legally blind game dev, they mentioned a specific accessibility problem:

If you have very limited eyesight, it is problematic if games lock your cursor to the center. For example when playing Zonotic, you may want to see some stats in some corner, but the cursor is always locked.

Some games may handle this well, like Minecraft where it frees the cursor when in the inventory view. But overall its random and relies on the engine to support that.

This could be fixed by allowing a seperate "mouse" input that is never locked into this engine. It could be triggered via a keyboard/mouse button shortcut, choosen in systemsettings.

This would switch the input to this specific mouse device that can always move around the screen  and use the kwin magnifier.

I am curious what you think about this and will also open a discussion on this topic.