Talk:Accessibility of Wikipedia, a March 2021 use test session

I stumbled upon these solutions in the making for the accessibility of inclusive language :

Maybe this helps Nattes à chat (talk) 14:04, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Feedbacks and reactions welcome[edit]

Hello @Nemo bis, Bluerasberry, Eric Luth (WMSE), WikiLucas00, André Costa (WMSE), Tanzania, Sebastian Berlin (WMSE), John Andersson (WMSE), Marcus Cyron, Stryn, Dikgosi Sejabodile, Marajozkee, Ivanhercaz, ZI Jony, Ainali, Alexcalamaro, Kaizenify, So9q, DannyS712, and Karl Wettin (WMSE):. I ping you here as your contributions to the Wikispeech project make me think that you might be interested in this report. More importantly, I would appreciate feedback on this report, be it about the topic (what you think I should read), the process (what I should improve in future similar actions) or the form (how I could have had better documented this).

Cheers, Psychoslave (talk) 15:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up! Definitely an interesting read. / André Costa (WMSE) (talk) 21:29, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you André, it is always nice to know that a report was worth the redaction time. Be bold with any suggestion on how I might do things better in future actions. For example, to my mind the video might have provided far more interest if I had been better handled. But they are other improvement I might not be as easily aware of, we all have our blind spots. Psychoslave (talk) 06:47, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Valuable work indeed !!. I agree with your proposals. Some of them seem easy to implement, as the bypass for the footnote references. They could be added to the next Community Wishlist Survey. Alexcalamaro (talk) 07:38, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There was an already existing proposal in Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Reading/Increased accessibility. I thought that it would make more sense to join on the existing efforts. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, I had not thought about it. Psychoslave (talk) 06:49, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So, I made an error here, the CWS 2021 was already close, and the next one is not yet launched. Psychoslave (talk) 16:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from a screen reader user[edit]

I was referred here from the accessibility talk page on the English Wikipedia. I have some quick comments to make as a screen-reader-using Wikipedia admin. Linux screen reader accessibility is basically a wasteland at the moment (with the exception of Emacspeak which is super-specialised), because many blind users have abandoned Linux for other platforms. The access key problem is completely specific to Orca (I remember it well when I briefly tried to use it ... and also MediaWiki is one of the few places on the web that uses access keys extensively these days), and most modern screen readers have better support for emojis/emoticons than Orca does. For a more indicative usability test you're better off finding someone who uses a modern screen reader on literally just about any other platform. Re footnotes: honestly, proficient screen reader users should just get used to their presence; they disrupt flow for sighted users too. Yes reading diffs properly is a bit tricky for screen reader users (I do it using the HTML source). I've never heard of a screen reader that doesn't read out the "+" and "minus" signs. I also don't know what is meant by the article content being hard to access ... on JAWS/NVDA it is right below the "Jump to: navigation/search" screen reader links. Graham87 (talk) 03:04, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your feedback.

Certainly, making test sessions with other solutions available on the market would be very informative. It's sad that Orca miss attention and love, and that no better generalist alternatives is available under FLOSS systems, if I well interpret. And although I would find that a relevant move to invest some WMF development resources in such a general accessibility tool, I feel unable to assess what chances of success such a proposal would have. What is your mind, should we launch some formal initiative to improve the state of screen reader under FLOSS systems?

As you say, the footnotes references disrupt flow for sighted users too. Depending on individual, it will be more or less a big obstacle. I already met someone for who length of lines in the default style was a considerable hindrance. I think that this is a point that make things less pleasant for most readers, but not all users are even aware of that, while for some of them that make the text as is unreadable. For that specific case, something like the "reader mode" of Firefox makes the trick. So maybe make a browser extension that push further such a reading mode by removing all footnote references and hyperlinks might be a complementary approach.

Regarding the plus and minus signs, I don't think that they are a problem for Orca in general. It's only in the diff page that they are "skipped", probably because they are inserted by the mean of a CSS "before" clause.

I just tested the tabulation order on some article, and it seems to confirm your experience that the main text is just after the "jump to search" link (and "locked article information" when the article is concerned). So I can't tell you as is why it what not that easy for Irina11y. Psychoslave (talk) 05:41, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Graham87, is having the plus and minus signs in the diff helpful? I assume that it is, but I wanted to be sure. Editing's devs were looking at those last year, in the hope that the plus and minus signs wouldn't be copied (for situations when you want to copy the wikitext from a diff and paste it into another page).

Also, have you ever tried the visual diff system in Beta Features? It is not really helpful for the kind of wikitext gnoming you do, but when it gets a clean diff, it might be faster for you on talk pages. You can toggle back and forth on the same page. (Please ping me; I'm not on Meta-Wiki very often.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Psychoslave: I just got your reply. yes, Orca is basically the only option for graphical usage on Linux desktops, as far as I understand. I wouldn't even know where to start re trying to bolster Linux screen readers and I don't think a formal initiative regarding this area would be a good use of our resources. @Whatamidoing (WMF): yes the plus/minus signs in diffs are useful. I'd never tried VisualDiff but in this attempt of mine, I just found it hard to tell what had changed and what hadn't (I have heading announcements turned off so that probably didn't help) and this diff was completely unreadable (I couldn't tell what had changed at all). as an experienced user I don't have major problems with diffs anyway unless they involve removal/addition of line breaks within an already-existing piece of text. Graham87 (talk) 04:29, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Graham87. That's useful information. I'll file a bug report in Phabricator. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:47, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is now phab:T280749. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:52, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]