AT-SPI was originally designed for using [[Common Object Request Broker Architecture]], an object-based [[Inter-process communication|IPC]]/[[Remote procedure call|RPC]] technology, for its transport protocol. The AT-SPI specification itself was tied to CORBA as it was defined in CORBA [[Interface description language|IDL]]. AT-SPI used the GNOME project's own fast and lightweight CORBA implementation, [[ORBit]], and its own framework for creating CORBA components, [[Bonobo (component model)|Bonobo]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Orca Documentation Series|url=https://www.mit.edu/~rjc/orca-docs.html|accessdate=2014-04-10}}</ref>
The GNOME project decided that the 3.0 release willwould be free of ORBit and Bonobo, meaning that a [[D-Bus]] AT-SPI solution was required.<ref>{{cite web|title=Planning for GNOME 3.0|url=https://wiki.gnome.org/ThreePointZero/Plan|accessdate=2014-04-10}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=GNOME 3 Porting Guide|url=https://wiki.gnome.org/DevGnomeOrg/Gnome3PortingGuide|accessdate=2014-04-10}}</ref> In an effort to move AT-SPI forward, a D-Bus project was started in November 2006. This took the form of a performance and design review available on the GNOME wiki. Work began on the implementation in May 2007.<ref>{{cite web|title=Accessibility/ATK/AT-SPI/AT-SPI on D-Bus|url=https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/en/AT-SPI_on_D-Bus#Background|accessdate=2014-04-10}}</ref> The D-Bus version of AT-SPI, AT-SPI version 2, was released along with GNOME 3.0 in April 2011.<ref>{{cite web|title=GNOME 3.0 released: better for users, developers|url=http://www.gnome.org/press/2011/04/gnome-3-0-released-better-for-users-developers-3/|accessdate=2014-04-10}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Git source code released with GNOME 3.0|url=https://git.gnome.org/browse/at-spi2-atk/log/?h=gnome-3-0|accessdate=2014-04-10}}</ref>
