Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

These RFCs were either rejected or have been replaced by an alternative proposal. They will not be included in phpBB.
philwhite
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by philwhite »

Thanks for that. It must be a pain for you dealing with novices!

Right! Off on my break.

Oleg
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by Oleg »

Please do not add options that are not necessary. If the screen reader stuff does not create a problem for non-screen reader people, just render it all the time.

Having an additional mandatory option during registration that is going to be left alone by 95% of users seems suboptimal.

philwhite
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by philwhite »

Oleg wrote:Please do not add options that are not necessary. If the screen reader stuff does not create a problem for non-screen reader people, just render it all the time.

Having an additional mandatory option during registration that is going to be left alone by 95% of users seems suboptimal.
Thank you for your comments.

The option for keyboard users has to be there, as it affects the visual display of the board. The option for "verbose" on and off would speed things up for screen reader users once they are familiar with what has been provided additionally. The default option is, as I say, purely psychological in order to prevent "normal" users from thinking that they are using a screen reader option. Some kind of selector must be present, and at least three options are necessary. I suppose I could use Default¦Screen reader expert¦Keyboard. I believe this would satisfy your request. On balance, I think you are probably right.

As far as having the options on the registration screen is concerned, it would merely draw attention to the availability of the options " Screen reader expert" and "Keyboard", particularly for keyboard users. Screen reader users have the extra links whatever option they choose (they are merely displayed visually with the "Keyboard" option), and a welcome announcement (which can be skipped) tells screen reader users that they can turn off some of the announcements by making a change in their profile. Thus, as I say, the availability of the options at registration is purely for the benefit of keyboard users.

If an accessibility features such as this were to be implemented in core code, then users who require it must know that it is there (and I assume that we want to shout out loud that PHPBB is accessible). Of course, if this was implemented as a MOD, administrators could choose whether or not the field appeared at registration. My own view is that it is pre-populated with "Default" and does no harm if it is present.

A further issue with the current implementation proposal also only affects keyboard users. The option to display keyboard links is only available to registered users. This could, of course, be overcome with a session variable and (yet another) drop-down list) in the header bar (my bored already uses the style switcher to allow partially sighted guests to choose the Visio style). Ugly, but possible. I shall have a look at this after I have completed the template changes to all the pages.

philwhite
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by philwhite »

Did anyone ever follow up on this:

http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-9457

The incorporation of aria roles would possibly do away with any need to touch the code itself and simply involve developing an alternative style (at least for screenreaders).

Oleg
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by Oleg »

I don't think anything happened on that front.

philwhite
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by philwhite »

Okay, I'll look at that as well

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DavidIQ
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by DavidIQ »

If you're not using a JAWS reader or similar to test your proposed changes then you don't really have a basis for making these changes. I can tell you that screen readers don't need to be able to see what's actually on the screen to assist the user in browsing through the site. There are title and summary attribute tags and other things that help with this as well as many others. I'm with Oleg with regards to there being no need for an option. The forum doesn't need to change at all visually for a screen reader to be able to do its job.
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philwhite
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by philwhite »

I am registered blind, but have some residual sight and work with magnifiers and a simple TTS system. I have JAWS installed and am due to receive training in the next couple of months. Based on comments from experienced screenreader users who find it tiresome, but a necessity, to wade through lists of links amounting to a hundred or so for long topics, I suggested that it would reduce navigation considerably if crucial links were additionally placed where they are most needed. This was generally perceived to be a good idea.

If you were to read the post, you would see that I was not proposing any visual changes to the board software except that the links could be made visible on demand for keyboard users.

Clearly, you have a better understanding of screenreaders and the needs of visually inpaired users than I.

Please mark this topic [ABD].

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DavidIQ
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by DavidIQ »

I am not disagreeing that we could probably do more to help screen readers, heck the system I code for at my job IRL has to be ADA compliant and even that system is a bear to get through for screen readers. I merely stated that if you are not using a screen reader that most people with visual impairments use (like JAWS) then you are not providing the proper feedback necessary to make the forum more friendly to screen readers.

I know for a fact that a summary attribute on a table would help a screen reader. I also know that hidden anchor tags also help as well as a few other things that would not be apparent to the user that is not visually impaired. I would like to think that we would be able to provide assistance to screen readers without having an additional user setting that must be configured at registration and without having to visually change the forum look and feel.

For what it's worth we have a similar setting in the system we provide at my job. All it does is disable the gigantic side navigation, since it can get as large as 100+ menu items. The rest is (mostly) automatic without the need for the setting.
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philwhite
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Re: Skiplink to next post (accessibility)

Post by philwhite »

Please mark this topic as [ABD]

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