Apple controls the entire stack

It's sad but the truth is: Apple and Microsoft can do this because they have a lot of money. Linux is not funded as it should be, and individual developers have neither the time nor the money to take care of a subject they know nothing about.

I have only found this page on the topic (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/inclusion-accessibility) but I'm pretty sure it's a niche subject. You need time and money to develop all those features, you need testers and web sites to coordinate your development, and you need doctors and stuff to guide the developers. It's hard for a reason.

There has been some noise about the state of accessibility in Linux last year. Seems that things are improving and the Devs of major DEs are taking things more seriously. From a more recent blog post on the topic:

Developers Are Rising to the Challenge

Here’s the good news: I’ve talked to developers from GNOME, KDE, and Fedora.

They get it. And they’re taking it seriously.

GNOME’s Wayland session is now stable and usable with Orca. KDE is catching up — and has a legally blind developer leading accessibility improvements. COSMIC is building Wayland from scratch with accessibility and global hotkey support in mind. For once, accessibility isn’t just a postscript. It’s in the room where design happens.

This transition is happening — but we’re not being ignored anymore.

https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/

The other posts in that series gives a good overview of previous things as well. Seems that author has been successful in raising awareness about the subject which hopefully will help improve things.

When it comes to magnifiers, then XFCE may be an option, where you can magnify your desktop almost down to the pixel with just 'alt + mouse wheel.'

There's Vojtux? https://github.com/vojtapolasek/vojtux

That's sad but that's not the first time in heard that.

In the KDE Plasma version 6.5 the screen magnifier work well with, for example Meta+Ctrl+mouse scroll.

However, for a screen reader I have no idea how it's should work and cannot test.

Is there any hope for accessibility on Linux?

My guess is about the same hope as for the world at large. [/Cynicism after some ongoing issues with the bank.]

Potentially even better hope, given it's Free Software, where everybody's free to mend it, using the 4 freedoms assuring we can use, study, share, change the software as we wish. ... Albeit with some non-triviality involved.

A lot of itches being scratched... but do these successful efforts get shared and integrated upstream, and consistently re-availed? Keep raising awareness. Accessibility features are good even for those who do not have to rely upon them. The more this awareness gets around, the more reliably these features will be present more ubiquitously, and not just a niche implementation or after-thought.

"Anybody can become disabled at any time."

Nobody tell this guy that the painting in his living room is HIDEOUS! It would break his heart...