Web portal interface is not accessible screen readers

#1

Very sad. The original CoRe was fully accessible as an Android app. The web version now is not accessible. Devestated as I was a big user of CoRE.

#2

Don’t despair. Wanna assist in making it screen reader friendly? I have no experience with those ;(

#3

Oh, wow. Absolutely. I want to assist. Thanks for your willingness to try.

#4

I am also interested in this and have worked fairly extensively with screen reader accessibility in Angular. I’ve been itching to at least make it more keyboard accessible (e.g. modal submit buttons inside the forms so I can press return after typing the dashboard password).

I am likely going to be away for a couple weeks but will touch base with ady to figure out how we could make this happen. It’s a tall order but there are some built-in and third-party tools for Angular that handle most of the basics.

#5

I updated WebCoRE last night and using firefox, it seems like the interface has improved substantially. It is somewhat usable with JAWS as a screen reader. It takes me a long time to create a Piston though as I have to use work-arounds to get things done. The line numbers all run into each other (as it gets read though) in the viewing window, so it is hard to follow the lines of codes. Some of the buttons in the navbar are also not labeled. Would be nice to have keyboard keystrokes to add statement, condition, etc.

I can test and provide feedback – I no nothing in Angular.

It is very exciting though that you guys are so willing to take this on.

#6

Thank you for the insight, your offer to help test is highly appreciated. I’m not a screen reader user so sometimes it’s not always clear what interaction would be expected; once we figure out how to proceed I’ll definitely need your input!

#7

@ady624,
I didn’t want to create another thread, so I am posting this here.

It appears that you may have made some recent updates to the interface which actually broke some of the partial accessibility in WebCoRE.

I have been using two browsers (simultaneously) to write Pistons. Chrome and Firefox. Now, if I am creating an if statement or an action, I cannot uparrrow and downarrow in the drop down list of devices to make selections – (with a screen reader that is). Additionally, I use to be able to change Piston settings in the same area where the “description field was located” while editing (Chrome), but as of this morning, I don’t see that ability on the editing page.

For Firefox, I use to simply press “enter” on a Piston to open it from the Dashboard, as of this morning, I have not been able to open a Piston that way for editing.

I have observed a navigation menu was added to the interface; I don’t know if it was in this update that access was broken.

Please take a look when you have a chance to work on the platform. Thanks all over the place. Appreciate your work and your time.

#8

It seems like arrow key navigation is still working for me, are you still having trouble with that? I’ll take a look to see whether third-party dependencies like the dropdown control get updated regularly but I don’t suspect that there were any major changes to those controls.

#9

I am yet to start working on ARIA support. But if something stopped working (and I am pretty sure webCoRE did not change), maybe the browser updated and there’s a new bug/feature/behavior that’s causing this?

#10

@ipaterson, yes. Same issue. The crazy thing is that when a screen reader is not active, it is very possible that the control actually behaves as intended. If I use Chrome and try to add a device from the dropdown box, the control doesn’t move.

@ady624, then the issue is probably from a browser update.

I will try to find a way to cope with it and work around the issue.

Thanks a bunch to both of you for your responsiveness and understanding. This is greatly appreciated.