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This Week in Plasma: new year, new accessibility features!
Quoting: This Week in Plasma: new year, new accessibility features! - KDE Blogs —
Plasma developers are starting to trickle back from their vacations, and are polishing up and merging work that was nearing completion late last year. Among them are some impactful accessibility features, plus lots more holiday goodies!
Also, allow us to thank everyone who donated to KDE’s 2025 end-of-year fundraiser. Thanks to all of you, we raised an additional €385,000 for KDE e.V. — a staggering, awe-inspiring sum of money! KDE e.V. will put it to good use keeping KDE financially and technically sustainable for years to come.
Finally, please welcome to TWiP John Veness, who has helped out with this week's post! Contributions here are warmly appreciated.
Linuxiac:
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KDE Plasma 6.6 Improves Accessibility, Wayland Usability, and UI Polish
KDE developers continue preparing Plasma 6.6, and although there are still over a month to go before the final stable release (scheduled for February 17, 2026), the team posts weekly updates on the KDE Blogs about what changes to expect from this version. After covering some of them in December, we now have a new batch to look at.
A notable new feature in Plasma 6.6 is the implementation of Slow Keys for Wayland sessions. It allows users to configure how long a key must be held before it registers, helping people with motor impairments avoid accidental key presses.
Neowin:
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Good news for gamers: KDE Plasma will no longer sleep while your game controller is in use - Neowin
The KDE Team has published the first "This Week in Plasma" update for the new year, highlighting new accessibility features for Plasma 6.6, and small fixes and improvements for 6.5.5.
In Plasma 6.6.0, set to release next month, there is now an implementation of the "Slow Keys" accessibility feature for the Wayland session. Slow keys was designed for people who have trouble with fine motor control. It works by making you press and hold a key for a short, specified time before the system accepts the input, which helps prevent accidental key presses.
Besides bringing Slow Keys to Wayland, Plasma 6.6 will also improve its Zoom accessibility effect with a new "Centered (Strict)" mode that keeps the mouse pointer locked in the exact center of your screen.