Talk:Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Reading/Increased accessibility

Proposal for complementary goals

Hello! Nice to see that such a proposal was already made. @Alexcalamaro: suggested me to create one after reading Accessibility of Wikipedia, a March 2021 use test session. This report include several recommendations for improvements on accessibility, transcluded hereafter. @Helper201:, you might want to take some of these ideas and integrate them in your proposal. If you wish, I can help with this process of integration.

To improve the browsing experience, the page might start with a single link "Go to the main menu", or possibly a second one "Go to the personal tools menu". After that, the article content should be the next accessed element through the tabulation navigation order. The opposite strategy can also be combined with this one: the first thing accessible through tabulation might be a link like "Go to the content". See the GNU Website for an example of page implementing such a practice. Note that this doesn't require any change on the visible interface. Links that lead to this menu can be hidden from users who don't require them, and the order in which tabulation browsing can be set independently from the HTML flow and of its visual rendering.

As a bypass solution to the problem of footnote references that disturb the output of Orca, it would be great to have an easily accessible version of articles that withdraws all links and footnotes references and keep only the "raw text", as one would read in a straightforward manner.

Regarding emoticons, several complementary approaches could be launched in the Wikimedia environment. All wikis should be populated with templates that allows to use emoticons that are well designed for accessibility. Campaign of communication to raise awareness of the existence of these templates and why it's important to use them rather than ASCII art or Unicode character alone should be launched after such a broadcast deployment. On a probably more long-term scale – as it would probably imply far more thought on software design development and integration – it would be even better to integrate a solution that guides more users towards good accessibility practices intuitively: triggering an emoticon menu combobox at colon input (:) is a rather common pattern in chat nowadays. This could be coupled with the previous approach, with the selection of an emoticon leading to output the proper template. Note that the rendered version of the new talk extension already includes a similar feature, with the arobase opening a dropdown list of users that one can notify.

Regarding Orca's shortcuts interference with page editing, most likely a bug report should be filled to the Orca team. Maybe a switch option already exists. But one should take into account that Iran11y has used this solution extensively for several years now, and during the session she went through option menus at a speed that is definitely not followable for a user who is not familiar with it. Surely it speaks for for the level of proficiency that this user has on this solution. So if a switch exists, it's accessibility is of discoverability should be increased. But, once again, here there is nothing that seems improvable on the Mediawiki side.

On the new talk extension, some thoughts might be given on how to optimize the tab path. Telling people that they are about to publish under a free license and give them links to this documents is certainly important. But having to pass through these links in order to arrive on the publication button is probably not essential. To be fair, yes, ctrl+enter do the job perfectly and directly since the edit box.

Creating an extension that would bundle user preferences that are optimized for screen reader users could be an approach that could be a mid term solution.

Cheers, Psychoslave (talk) 06:35, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Call for additional attention on this demand

@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, Karl Wettin (WMSE), and Iran11y: given your interest on Wikispeech and/or accessibility, you might have some valuable comments to provide here. You might also consider to support the project. Psychoslave (talk) 06:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

@Psychoslave: Isn't this vote already closed? ♥Ainali ^talk_{contributions} 07:42, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that. Where can I see the deadlines? Psychoslave (talk) 09:05, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I think you are right, I've been confused that the Wishlist Survey 2021 is conducted during 2020 for what should be done in 2021. There is no Community Wishlist Survey 2022 it seems. Psychoslave (talk) 09:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

@Psychoslave: I recommend centralization of discussion as a next step. "Accessibility" is neglected and disordered. I just added links to this and other recent posts including your Accessibility of Wikipedia, a March 2021 use test session to that page.

If others engage on the talk page there then I would join. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:28, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Wonderful, thank you for making me aware of this page and for the addition of the link. Psychoslave (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2021 (UTC)