FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Blind Access Journal Launches Community Effort to Improve WSJT-X Accessibility for Aging and Disabled Amateur Radio Operators
Peoria, Arizona — December 20, 2025 — Darrell Hilliker, NU7I, a totally blind Amateur Radio operator and accessibility professional, is spearheading a community initiative to improve the accessibility of WSJT-X (and WSJT-X Improved) for blind, low-vision, and mobility-impaired hams. The work is being organized and documented through Blind Access Journal, the blog Hilliker publishes to advance practical accessibility and inclusion in technology.
Digital weak-signal protocols like FT8 have become a core part of modern Amateur Radio. Yet many hams—especially those who are aging or who acquire disabilities—are finding it harder to participate fully when widely used software lacks accessible user interface foundations.
“A month doesn’t go by where I don’t hear at least one conversation on the bands where an older ham is contemplating giving up or curtailing their activities due to a physical disability like arthritis or a visual impairment,” said Hilliker. “We can do better as a community—and we can do it together.”
Recognizing Existing Innovation and Building an Inclusive Future
This initiative is not a critique of existing community solutions, nor is it intended to replace them. Blind Access Journal recognizes and commends the developers of alternative tools such as QLog, whose efforts have helped many operators. Instead, Hilliker’s project aims to broaden inclusion by improving accessibility in the widely adopted WSJT-X ecosystem so that more hams can participate using the tools their clubs, friends, and on-air communities already rely on.
“The entire Amateur Radio community benefits from all efforts to adapt,” Hilliker added, “especially in situations where disabled hams are not fully included from the beginning.”
Goal: Full and Equitable Access to Digital Operating
The initiative’s objective is nothing less than full and equitable access to Amateur Radio digital communication protocols and the software that enables them. Key accessibility goals include:
- Expected keyboard navigation throughout the application
- Strong compatibility with screen readers such as JAWS and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access)
- UI that can reflow and resize for operators using magnification
- Support for dark mode, high contrast, and other visual accommodations that many aging hams depend on
Highest Priority Technical Need
The most critical improvement—especially for blind screen-reader users—centers on the Band Activity and Rx Frequency tables. Today, these areas are widely experienced as inaccessible because the data is effectively “painted” to the screen or presented as unstructured text, rather than implemented using the underlying Qt5 UI structures that expose information to accessibility interfaces.
The initiative seeks a redesign and implementation approach that ensures these tables are true, semantically structured UI components—so assistive technologies can reliably read, navigate, and interact with them.
Call for Volunteer Developers
Blind Access Journal is calling on a small group of experienced Amateur Radio software builders and tinkerers—especially those who:
- Have deep experience with Qt5 user interfaces
- Can build and compile WSJT-X or WSJT-X Improved from source with confidence
- Are willing to collaborate with disabled hams in an open, test-driven, user-centered process
Familiarity with accessibility design and standards such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is welcome but not required. Disabled hams involved in the effort are prepared to lead the process, define needs, perform testing, write documentation, and support the work in every way outside of the core design and coding tasks.
Volunteers will gain the satisfaction of delivering long-sought, meaningful accessibility improvements to a widely used mainstream Amateur Radio application—work that can make a real difference for thousands of fellow hams.
Looking Toward 2026
Blind Access Journal thanks the Amateur Radio community for its time, creativity, and tradition of public service. The initiative’s organizers hope to make 2026 a year of digital accessibility and inclusion for all radio amateurs.
To volunteer or learn more:
Email editor@blindaccessjournal.com and follow updates via Blind Access Journal.
Media Contact
Darrell Hilliker, NU7I
Blind Access Journal
Email: editor@blindaccessjournal.com