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A11y Slackers Gitter Channel Archive 13th of October 2015

What fresh hell is THIS now? - Patrick Lauke
  1. StommePoes
    06:22
    @Jitendra re Dennis' #3: "3. By default, browsers render placeholder text with insufficient color contrast by default in browsers so this must always be patched (which is hardly ever done)."
  2. StommePoes
    06:23
    He says this like that's a bad thing. It's a GOOD thing-- dark placeholders are a known US problem, people are known to skip those fields because they look filled in with a good-enough default value.
  3. StommePoes
    06:27
    @deborahgu would be cool to get some big player like Booking.com to do such a study of minimalist forms vs usable forms and ROI. They already do a lot of A/B and get a bazillion users per second so can get useful results fast
  4. StommePoes
    06:27
    s/US/UX in my earlier comment
  5. zakim-robot
    07:56
    [jitendra, a11y] @stomme - His point was that placeholder should have enough contrast so people can read
  6. StommePoes
    07:58
    @jitendra: but since people vary on how much contrast is enough, you end up following WCAG guidelines for contrast-- and that means they get contrasty enough that people start thinking the placeholders are instead values
  7. MichielBijl
    11:43
    Placeholders are useless if you ask me.
  8. MichielBijl
    11:45
    You should either use a proper label (we all know people that use placeholders as labels—there is talk of adding placeholders to name calculation…), or your validation sucks (and that's why you force your custom syntax on people).
  9. zakim-robot
    11:45
    [Kevin Lozandier, a11y] @dylanb: Somewhat related, regarding autofocus on the first field of a form, do you recommend that? I’ve been worried users are being “forced” to type on an input field without context the legend or section header would provide
  10. MichielBijl
    11:46
    @Kevin Lozandier: wouldn't that information be announced by AT?
  11. zakim-robot
    11:52
    [Kevin Lozandier, a11y] I don’t know how much screen readers do and not do and figured @dylanb and other here would know; do you?'
  12. stevefaulkner
    11:54
    hey slackers
  13. MichielBijl @MichielBijl waves at Steve
  14. MichielBijl
    11:55
    @Kevin: a screen reader for example should read out the label and any heading associated with the form.
  15. stevefaulkner
    11:56

    @Kevin: a screen reader for example should read out the label and any heading associated with the form.

    should they?

  16. MichielBijl
    11:57
    Shouldn't they?
  17. MichielBijl
    11:58
    At the very least the label of the input that has focus, right?
  18. MichielBijl
    11:58
    Wouldn't it be preferable to also announce the legend/heading of a form if focus is set to the first input?
  19. stevefaulkner
    11:59
    @MichielBijl they will read out the accessible name and accessible description (if provided)
  20. MichielBijl
    11:59
    Visually you'd sort of skim back to the top until you found the information you needed to make sense of the focused field. I guess you could do that with AT too.
  21. stevefaulkner
    11:59
    headings/legends aren't same thing legend is a group label
  22. MichielBijl
    12:00
    @stevefaulkner so you could link an input to a heading/intro text thingy to have that read out.
  23. MichielBijl
    12:00
    Whoops, sorry
  24. stevefaulkner
    12:05
    np :-)
  25. stevefaulkner
    12:07
    @MichielBijl https://twitter.com/stevefaulkner/status/653904865240961024
  26. MichielBijl
    12:14
    @stevefaulkner :) This uses autofocus: http://dev.agosto.nl/a11y/legend.html
  27. MichielBijl
    12:14
    If I visit that page with VoiceOver, it announces the label (HTML or XHTML) and the legend; as you said.
  28. MichielBijl
    12:15
    That is what I meant :)
  29. stevefaulkner
    12:20
    :+1:
  30. MichielBijl
    12:21
    I haven't slept in ±30 hours; so my brain is on the fritz.
  31. MichielBijl
    12:22
    I should not be allowed to be on the internet today.
  32. stevefaulkner
    12:24
    hey don't be so hard on yourself (shouldn't be allowed anyday) ;-)
  33. MichielBijl
    12:25
    Haha, that is true
  34. stevefaulkner
    12:25
    @MichielBijl note i just had a question on client help desk about JAWS announcing heading before input under some circumstances...
  35. stevefaulkner
    12:26
    its a bug in JAWS
  36. zakim-robot
    13:10
    [dylanb, a11y] @lozandier: there is no such thing as "always" :simple_smile: except that it will always depend on the situation
  37. stevefaulkner
    13:19
    hey @dylanb thanks for the hi on stack, my friend @sideshowbarker has been pointing me at questions there
  38. zakim-robot
    13:43
    [dylanb, a11y] @stevef: the more the merrier, I have been feeling lonely there for a while now :simple_smile:
  39. MichielBijl
    13:44
    stack as in StackOverflow?
  40. stevefaulkner
    13:45
    @MichielBijl ya
  41. stevefaulkner
    13:46
    @dylanb i just answer the easy ones ;-)
  42. zakim-robot
    13:48
    [dylanb, a11y] @stevef: so do I :wink:
  43. zakim-robot
    13:49
    [dylanb, a11y] and the ones that aren't asked by complete idiots
  44. MichielBijl
    13:58
    I just ignore them all
  45. MichielBijl
    13:58
    Except for when Steve links to one of them
  46. MichielBijl
    13:58
    Then I actively avoid them
  47. zakim-robot
    14:01
    [Kevin Lozandier, a11y] @stevef: @michiel @dylanb Thanks, this is all really helpful advice
  48. stevefaulkner
    14:04
    :+1:
  49. MichielBijl
    14:05
    :smile:
  50. zakim-robot
    14:15
    [jitendra, a11y] Is it possible to automate screen reader testing?
  51. garcialo
    14:15
    yes
  52. garcialo
    14:16
    there aren't any tools that specifically do it
  53. garcialo
    14:16
    but you could do it with any scripting language that will work on the OS you want to automate/test
  54. zakim-robot
    14:17
    [jitendra, a11y] if a website has 20 pages and if I want to test how every page will work with Voiceover
  55. zakim-robot
    14:17
    [jitendra, a11y] usually we would sit on laptop and will listen every page, right?
  56. deborahgu
    14:18
    you could do what fangs does, basically
  57. deborahgu
    14:18
    do a quick run through, but you'd have to write-per page tests
  58. garcialo
    14:18
    yeah, and if you're going to automate it, you'd need a way to log it
  59. deborahgu
    14:18
    eg your automated tester wouldn't know whether or not some random span is supposed to be an actionable button
  60. garcialo
    14:19
    it won't be automated like "push a button get results of issues"
  61. deborahgu
    14:21
    yeah. it would almost be more regression testing than anything -- like most good TDD, to be honest. In order to write the tests, you'd have to have realised these were issues to begin with.
  62. zakim-robot
    16:12
    [Carolyn MacLeod, a11y] @cryberg: I have heard that JAWS 17 fixed a problem with alert role not being read in IE11. Not sure if it helps, but if you want to try it, the JAWS 17 beta is here: http://www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/jaws/jawspublicbeta
  63. zakim-robot
    16:12
    [Carolyn MacLeod, a11y] Also, not sure, but this might be the issue with NVDA: http://community.nvda-project.org/ticket/2442
  64. zakim-robot
    16:13
    [Claire Ryberg, a11y] @car thanks for the heads up! I'll definitely check that out
  65. powrsurg
    16:31
    I've got a weird issue in Firefox where I have a div with a tabindex (which lets someone tab to it to move the container left or right) that will not move to the img within it (that also has a tabindex that lets you select the image) one that image has been selected. After that tabbing actually moves you back to the previous tab (so it acts like a shift+tab). How does one debug that?
  66. powrsurg
    16:40
    nm, I see what's going on ...
  67. deborahgu
    19:00
    you know when sites have built-in text-to-speech, eg. ReadSpeaker? Does anyone know of any use testing/statistics to learn if the users who need the feature of discover it? I know it is theoretically aimed at users who don't need a full-time screen reader but might benefit in this particular site's use case, often people with reading disabilities or seniors, but I have no idea if there's been any analysis of how many of those users find the applications and continue to use them.
  68. deborahgu
    19:00
    s/feature of/feature/
  69. zakim-robot
    22:21
    [ccwilcox, a11y] @jitendra: This page about writing AppleScript to control VoiceOver might help http://www.cbtbc.org/tools/asvo/
  70. zakim-robot
    22:24
    [ccwilcox, a11y] It has information about script commands to control navigation but for automated or semi-automated testing what you’d also want is to be able to log the contents of the caption panel so could have a text file you can “diff.” Glancing over it I see options for getting caption panel properties but not ones for getting the text itself.