Inaccessibility to screenreaders

[StrangeGirlMurph]

I am shocked to find out that etherpad isn't accessible to screenreaders at all. How did no one think about that? It's truly horrible. For me it just cycles through the line numbers. No sight of a skip to content link or anything. I mean there is no point in even listing out everything that's bad. See for yourself.

Yes making it truly accessible to screenreaders with all the edit functionality is hard but allowing people to actually read the content is a must.

Please work on that.

[SamTV12345]

Hi @StrangeGirlMurph Could you ellaborate on where Etherpad is not accessible? Would be great to find out so we can fix it.

[StrangeGirlMurph]

Hey @SamTV12345, sadly basically everywhere. I don't feel like giving an accessibility in web dev 101 talk and explain the absolute basics. I would hope someone on the team would have at least some knowledge. There is also: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Core/Accessibility
I highly recommend you also just try it out yourself! I find tablets are a great way to test screen reader support.

Basically is etherpad right now just not navigable for screen readers. Some points:

• To get to the main content you have to go over all editing tools in the header. Thats 18 swipes. Thats what skip to content buttons are there for!
• On etherpad.wikimedia.org you can't individually cycle through the paragraphs and links. You have know where they are located in order to click them. It just treats all the text as one big block.
• After that it individually cycles through every single line number and just reads them out loud. Of course a blind person would have no clue that the numbers read are line numbers.

These are just some things. Someone really needs to actually think this through. Your LLM of choice can also offer some directions.

[StrangeGirlMurph]

Okay I took the time to make a small screen recording of me just swiping through. People who know what to look for will find many problems from that. Note that doesn't even cover all the problems with actually interacting with the buttons. The chat for example in the end is just not available.

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