Hi everyone,
I wanted to share an incredible tool for anyone who owns an Elgato Stream Deck (or is thinking about getting one) but has been frustrated by Elgato’s completely inaccessible official software.
As many of you know, the first-party Elgato app relies heavily on visual drag-and-drop mechanics to assign actions to keys, making it incredibly hostile for screen reader users. Fortunately, the open-source community has stepped up to fix this.
There is a brilliant, cross-platform alternative application called “OpenDeck” (developed by nekename on GitHub). Thanks to a massive accessibility push by blind developer and advocate Florian from the Netherlands, OpenDeck’s interface has been heavily updated with robust keyboard-driven workflows and excellent screen reader support.
Instead of sending another email requesting accessibility, Florian collaborated directly with the maintainer to fix it. Thanks to these updates, the focus outlines on interactive elements stay visible during keyboard navigation, empty slots can be selected via keyboard shortcuts, and the action list is fully keyboard accessible. You can now entirely configure your macro keys, profiles, and buttons using clean keyboard workflows.
What you can do with it:
• Complete Keyboard Navigation: Program buttons, set text, and manage actions entirely via your screen reader and keyboard, bypassing the official app entirely.
• Run Ecosystem Plugins: Because it supports the original Stream Deck SDK, you can run the mainstream plugins you actually want (such as OBS controls, system audio/media management, smart home integrations, and application launching).
• Dynamic Profiles: It supports advanced features like automatic profile switching when you change active computer applications, multi-actions, and toggle states.
If you’ve had a Stream Deck sitting on your desk feeling like an expensive paperweight, or if you've been holding off on buying one because of the software barriers, OpenDeck completely changes the game on Windows.
You can grab the latest accessible release directly from the GitHub releases page here:
https://github.com/nekename/OpenDeck
Curious to know if anyone else here has given it a spin yet, or what kind of button layouts and audio/media profiles you're setting up with it!
Comments
Cool
Looks great, I'm far too broke to own a streamdeck but more accessibility is always great. Great to see open source pushing forward.
Works Very Well!
Thanks for the comment! To give a bit more context on how I stumbled into this and how it actually feels to use day-to-day:
A while ago, a friend of mine traded me his 15-button Stream Deck MK.2 that he had lying around for some other cool gear I had. I was originally incredibly disappointed when I plugged it in and found out the official Elgato software was completely inaccessible. It just sat there like a cool-looking brick.
When "Double Tap Canada" had Florian on to talk about the accessibility update he submitted to the OpenDeck developers, I was intrigued. Suddenly, I had a way to turn this brick into something genuinely useful.
Under the hood, the application is coded in Rust and Tauri, making it an incredibly lightweight little app. Even though it runs as a native desktop application, the UI behaves more like a web page. If you are using JAWS, you do have to toggle the Virtual PC Cursor off and on depending on where you are in the app — certain areas work much better with it turned off, and others work better with it on.
But hey, for a self-proclaimed newbie like me, it's easy enough to use once you wrap your head around that workflow! Plus, a huge bonus is that you can still download and install plugins directly from the official Elgato plugin store and run them inside OpenDeck.
Since I noticed absolutely no one had brought OpenDeck up here on AppleVis yet, I figured it was definitely worth posting about—just in case anyone else has a Stream Deck gathering dust and wants to finally make it useful!