@jscholes@dragonscave.space
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

jscholes

@jscholes@dragonscave.space

Digital #Accessibility Engineer/Analyst, #ScreenReader user, and occasional #software developer. #a11y

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Tamasg, to accessibility

I am not sure why, but recently when I tab around the task bar, I get to a region of the screen that reads, "pane dragging". Another tab, nothing is announced. Another tab, start button. And I saw this now on clean Windows 11 installs. Clearly they forgot to train some team somewhere about accessibility - this is why it should be an ongoing process even at large companies, because having it as part of your docs or C/I pipeline doesn't mean a developer will understand or have empathy about #a11y

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@Tamasg Yeah, not sure what that is. I installed ExplorerPatcher and set the Taskbar style to Windows 10, and all the strange tab-stops went away.

ppatel, to microsoft
@ppatel@mstdn.social avatar

If virtual murder were possible, bloody Microsoft with pushing bloody Edge everywhere would be at the top of my list. Outlook defaulting to Edge is the latest bloody travesty.

I swear my next machine is going to be a Mac.

#Enshitification #Microsoft #ads #MurderTech

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@ppatel So then you can use Safari everywhere instead, which is an objectively-worse browser? Apple don’t care how VoiceOver works with alternatives.

jscholes,
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@ppatel Right, hence my second sentence. Apple do not have a primary objective to support alternative browsers with VO. The fact that they work at all is mostly down to browser vendors.

jscholes,
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@ppatel Microsoft doesn’t make your screen reader, so I’m not sure I understand this response. My point being that while Microsoft’s behaviour is shitty, there are usually technical ways to work around it. You can’t fix Apple systemically not giving a damn.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@ppatel This support article suggests that the behaviour is configurable: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/outlook-emails-open-next-to-web-links-in-microsoft-edge-b0e1a1c1-bd62-462c-9ed5-5938b9c649f0

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@ppatel I don't know if it is, as I don't use Outlook. But, if that page is wrong, there are probably Group Policy and/or registry hacks. Failing that, I would write a small NVDA add-on to intercept Enter/Space, check if the relevant object is a link, and open it in Chrome if so. It is not a good thing that such work-arounds are needed, but I view it as a good thing that they are possible.

TheQuinbox, to random

I'm honestly still shocked that my main code editor comes from Microsoft, and they also (generally) have a very fast turnaround on accessibility bugs. The people that brought us Visual Studio also managed to bring us VS Code. A fucking godsend. I'm so much more efficient due to being able to explore a function stack quickly, not to mention everything else it does.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@miki When a 127-option dropdown allows fast scrolling with a mouse, but type-ahead doesn't work for keyboard users, that is an accessibility problem. It may not violate WCAG, but such a narrow definition of what represents "inaccessible" is the reason that productivity for disabled users is being slowly, disproportionately decreased across the board. As to Windows 11 and Teams, they are both full of legitimate accessibility failings. @FreakyFwoof @x0 @TheQuinbox

FreakyFwoof, to random

Today I wanted to try to make some kind of thing with . It's difficult as it has no dotted or swing quantise options, so I just made something straight instead. Still, I think it's pretty funky never the less. Audio attached.
You can mess with the live set for yourself if you like: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vvi32von651ktua/Reggableton.ablbundle?dl=1

jscholes,
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@simon @FreakyFwoof When I've uploaded audio attachments with the web interface, adding a description works the same as adding alt text to an image. TweeseCake doesn't even seem to let you do that, which I shouldn't be surprised about but am nonetheless. Adding alt text is apparently something we just demand of others, because of course blind people whould never post pictures themselves. Ridiculous.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@simon @FreakyFwoof When I've uploaded audio attachments with the web interface, adding a description works the same as adding alt text to an image. TweeseCake doesn't even seem to let you do that, which I shouldn't be surprised about but am nonetheless. Adding alt text is apparently something we just demand of others, because of course blind people would never post pictures themselves. Ridiculous.

amir, to random

Over the past few days I've been extensively comparing JAWS 2023 (June release) with NVDA (Alpha 28542). I'm a hard-core NVDA user, having switched to it full-time from JAWS almost 6 years ago), and really like it. However, NVDA doesn't perform quite well in MS Word 2021. My issues range from SHIFT+Left/Right and SHIFT+Home/End not being able to report what's being selected/deselected, the cursor being stuck upon pressing Up/Down after using the Find feature and then Control+PageUp/PageDown to move to other text matches, the cursor being stuck in page headers/footers, etc. I've even tried the NVDA Word add-on, but it mostly slows down NVDA in large documents. Surprisingly, JAWS handles all of these cases very well. And one final issue is that - unlike JAWS, NVDA doesn't switch to the proper TTS language automatically when ALT+Shift is used to force-activate a new typing language, making it very difficult to interact with passages utilizing more than one language.
I know that a lot of effort has been made to enhance NVDA on the web - and it has indeed paid off, but, IMO, a major focus should be shifted towards making NVDA more compatible with Office apps - Word, Outlook, Excel, etc.
P.S.: Apart from creating issues on Github, I can provide problematic Word documents if needed.
@NVAccess
@jcsteh

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@amir With UIA, the announcement of page numbers seems to depend on which view mode/layout being used. For instance, page numbers seem to work consistently when using print layout. @x0 @NVAccess @jcsteh

datajake1999, to random

Why am I listening to DECtalk adaptations of Red Dwarf through a floating point UK English version of DECtalk Access32 4.60 R8?

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@datajake1999 @FreakyFwoof @KaraLG84 @simon As are the audiobooks, some of which are read by actors from the original series.

jscholes,
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@simon @datajake1999 @FreakyFwoof @KaraLG84 Books 1 and 2, narrated by Chris Barrie/Rimmer, are on Audible. But they don't seem to have the other two, which are Last Human, narrated by Craig Charles/Lister, and Backwards, read disappointingly by the author (Rob Grant).

https://www.audible.com/series/Red-Dwarf-Audiobooks/B00HS7S1DG?ref=a_search_c3_lSeries_1_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=A2AQMP1105PMTZZN8AQ0&pageLoadId=O7KFum9DUH6SJAve&creativeId=0d6f6720-f41c-457e-a42b-8c8dceb62f2c

TheQuinbox, to random

I've published the first version of my Android Studio NVDA add-on. It's fairly primitive at the moment, but has already made me way more efficient. It adds a command (NVDA+E) to read the status bar, and also makes F2 and Shift+F2 read what line they move you to. It's available on the add-on store, or here. https://github.com/TheQuinbox/android-studio-nvda

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@TheQuinbox @Brynify Define a member called statusBar inside your AppModule instance. If you need to compute it on lookup, use an @property decorator.

JonathanMosen, to random
@JonathanMosen@tweesecake.social avatar

The resolutions of a blindness convention provide a record of matters of concern, and help to shape advocacy over the coming year. At NFB, resolutions first go to the Resolutions Committee for a debate and vote. Those that pass make it to the convention floor for discussion and a vote of the full convention. This year, there are many thought-provoking proposed resolutions. You can read them ahead of the Resolutions Committee meeting on Sunday. https://nfb.org/resources/speeches-and-reports/resolutions/proposed-2023-resolutions #NFB23

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@JonathanMosen If only screen reader users being the primary audience was reflected in the lack of repeated "Regarding the" and "WHEREAS," prefixes. Broadly speaking, the content itself seems to be written in a cognitively accessible manner, and there is no need for this pompous clutter.

jscholes,
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@JonathanMosen Point taken, but I don't think that invalidates the impact. Nothing changes until someone decides that it should.

jscholes,
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@ppatel @JonathanMosen I appreciate the insight, and do not have much knowledge in this area. I agree that this is of minor importance in the grand scheme of things, but legitimately found some of the content difficult to aurally parse. I am always open to increaseing readability, and hence accessibility more broadly, when no legal reasons exist for content to be framed in a particular way, and/or when non-legally-binding but no-less-ambiguous versions can be provided separately.

KaraLG84, to random
@KaraLG84@dragonscave.space avatar

The way Windows seems to be heading, I think I have a slight bit of sympathy for the people still clinging on to Windows XP. I imagine that'll be me in 20 years time but with windows 10

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@KaraLG84 It's unfortunate that it's becoming less and less obvious how to configure Windows to be efficient and usable. Having said that, using XP, and even Windows 7, in 2023 is recklessly dangerous, and I imagine comes with its own set of issues e.g. the built-in trusted root CA store being extremely out of date meaning you can't connect to certain websites or APIs from some applications. It's thankfully never come up, but if someone at work wanted to use XP on a system that was exposed to our files and such we would have to just help them upgrade. It wouldn't be acceptable otherwise.

TheQuinbox, to random

I'm writing an NVDA app module to help with the accessibility of Android studio. My first task was to find a way to read the status bar with a simple gesture. I found a way to do it. Get the foreground object, get its first child, then continuously get the next child until the role is controlTypes.Role.STATUSBAR. I had to do it with a while loop, until the child is not None. If the role is correct, break out of the loop. Otherwise, grab the next child and continue. Ugly, and slow. I miss my Swift/Rust! Why can I not just call filter on a list of UI controls, and pass a closure that checks my condition? Worst case, just grab the first element out of the list/vector?

I said I'd never come around to a lot of modern language features/abstractions, and I was wrong. Be proud of yourselves, Swift and Rust teams. I'm impressed. And also annoyed that I can no longer code NVDA add-ons without wanting to die.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@TheQuinbox Others have already pointed out itertools and similar. Alternatives to also consider:

  1. Store a reference to the object when it's created in an event_NVDAObject_init handler, rather than looking for it every time. I don't think I've seen this done much, or at all, in NVDA add-ons, and so there may be pitfalls I'm not aware of. It could also just be that people don't think to try it.
  2. If the status bar has an HWND, use windowUtils.findDescendantWindow in conjunction with NVDAObjects.IAccessible.getNVDAObjectFromEvent to locate it.
jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@TheQuinbox 1. If NVDA is aware of it being created, it could still work. Although, I'm not sure if there is a corresponding event for an object being destroyed, or even if this application would destroy and recreate the control as needed rather than e.g. just hiding and showing it all the time. Interesting possibilities, anyway.
2. Almost certainly not.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@jcsteh There is a lot of verbose code in many add-ons because of having to traverse the object hierarchy in this way. Are there any helpers that add-on authors should be aware of? I'm not expecting a general-purpose query-selector-style API... although such a thing would be nice! @TheQuinbox @x0

TheQuinbox, to random

Me: taps to turn on USB debugging, in Android developer options.

Android: "WARNING! USB debugging is for development purposes only!"

Me: "... ... ... Yeah. That's why I had to access it...through developer settings."

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@TheQuinbox I think you probably know this, but they didn't implement it that way just to annoy you. Enabling this mode is potentially a significant security risk for somebody pressured/social-engineered into doing so. The more steps that are necessary to make it happen, the more opportunities there are for a person's brain to go, "wait a second... this doesn't feel like something I should be doing". Granted, there should probably also be some text declaring the risks in an explicit way rather than a cute multi-tap gesture.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@TheQuinbox This is a constant balancing act. For instance, I have accounts with several banks and other financial companies. In some cases, sending large amounts of money requires a single confirmation button to be pressed, and maybe Face ID. In others, I have to OK my way through several scary-sounding screens about fraud, asking me to give up my rights to complain if it turns out to be fraud and I said it wasn't. In the latter case, the bank in question has systems in place that check recipient names and such, so they know it probably isn't fraud, making the fearmongering unnecessary. But in the former, I could end up sending thousands of pounds to the wrong person because the app was so cavalier about reducing the number of clicks.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@TheQuinbox There are usually good answers to this, if design and security are allowed to harmonise. Usually, they are not, and one side ends up winning over the other one. Here ends Monday's user interface lecture.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@TheQuinbox There are usually good answers to this, if design and security are allowed to harmonise. More often than not, they aren't, and one side ends up winning over the other one. Here ends Monday's user interface lecture.

simon, to random

Are any Windows users experiencing ... seriously bizarre issues with all web browsers at once? Screen readers don't seem to have a clue where focus is supposed to be, tabbing stops working, focus mode is not able to focus the control I want. Switching browsers and screen readers sems to do nothing. I recently had to rip out all the Visual C++ runtimes by the roots and reinstall JAWS, so I wonder if it's put my system into a seriously broken state. I can't find a way to resolve this except for rebooting the machine. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but the behaviour is so inconsistent and unresponsive that it's hard to get an idea of what's even going on.

jscholes,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@simon Did you run the COM Registration Fixing tool?

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