accessibility for blind and visually impaired people

calidabarboza
Is zotero accessible using the JAWS reader or other software?
  • adamsmith
    My understanding is that it should be, yes. Zotero is based on mozilla, which has a good record of working with JAWS. That said, Zotero is too small a project to have its own accessibility testers, so if you or someone else finds issues, feel free to report them here.
  • jmedino
    Just today I have been training a group of impaired and totally blind people. Most of them used JAWS and although they could access some of the menues they haven't been able to catch references directly from several databases (through the icons utility in the navigation bar). In addition none of the icons of the Zotero tools bar (Actions, New Iterm, etc.) aren't detected by JAWS however, once I put the mouse on any icon and click on it, JAWS offered the context menu... Something like this occured when I was explaining the Word complement Zotero bar, the buttons/icons were not detected :-(

    Surprisingly for me Zotero is not so accesible as I thought. I have promised my students to ask for any solution in Zotero forums or maybe we were doing something wrong, were we?

    I will thank you very much for any response.
    Juan Medino (Madrid, Spain)
  • adamsmith
    The URL bar icon is accessible via shortcut (ctrl+shift+s on Windows/Linux I think cmd+shift+s on Mac).
    For Word you can assign keyboard shortcuts. So those issue have easy solutions that don't require a screenreader. Zutilo makes most other functionality accessible via keyboard.
    Can't speak to the general JAWS issue, though.
  • dr1861
    I am a blind user of zotero, and I have been having problems adding shortcuts from firefox on windows. I am working on my masters thesis, and have been doing a lot of searching in scholar.google.com. When I am on a list of results for a search and press ctrl+shift+s to display the zotero selection list, I can see all the articles/pages listed. If I check one or more items and then click the ok button, the items are not copied to my zotero library.

    I am using firefox 34.0.5 on windows 7 64-bit with the zotero plugin.

    The zotero standalone product is only moderately accessible with the jaws screenreader. The menus are accessible but as noted in a prior post, the toolbar buttons are not labeled in a way that jaws can read them.
  • adamsmith
    Are you able to add items from other pages, e.g. here:
    http://www.worldcat.org/title/wealth-of-nations-books-i-iii/oclc/8424650&referer=brief_results
    If so, we'd have to do google scholar-specific troubleshooting.

    Otherwise, it'd look like you're seeing this: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sharing_data_directory

    (I have no experience supporting blind users, so please let me know if any of that information isn't accessible to you)
  • dr1861
    I went to the worldcat page and pressed ctrl+shift+s and nothing happened. I then performed a search inside of the worldcat page and got a list of articles (none of them was the article I was actually looking for), I then pressed the ctrl+shift+s and got the list of items. I checked one of them and clicked ok.

    The item did appear in my library from the firefox zotero.

    I Read the kb article about sharing the libraries and I can't figure out how to show the path to the library from within firefox. I am certain that the two applications are using separate libraries which obviously doesn't help.
  • adamsmith
    edited January 16, 2015
    I then pressed the ctrl+shift+s and got the list of items. I checked one of them and clicked ok.
    The item did appear in my library from the firefox zotero.
    OK, and when you do the same thing with google scholar, the item doesn't appear in your Zotero for Firefox library?

    Zotero displays a notification item (at the bottom right) when it saves items. Does JAWS pick that up at all or are you unaware of that?


    On possible issue with google scholar specifically is number ten under this link:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_translator_issues
    See if that applies.

    In order to get to the Zotero for Firefox preferences, you need to click on the Action menu toolbar icon (which, as you point out, isn't accessible easily. It's the third one from the left, if that helps?
  • dr1861
    Hi again,

    I can't find the prefferences in firefox, but with a little filesystem sloothing, I found where firefox/zotero stored their libraries and edited the standalone to point to the firefox version.

    As for google scholar, I discovered I had history turned off so once I enabled history, then items are being saved to the library from within scholar.google.com just fine.

    Thank you for all your help!
  • adamsmith
    excellent, glad that now all seems to be working. I'll see if there's a simple fix for the toolbar buttons (while there is a good amount of stuff on how to make webpages accessible, there is very little I can find on add-ons, including in terms of testing toos).
    Or we can at least add a keyboard shortcut for the actions/gears menu.
  • Muruganandan
    dear developers of Zotero and forum, I'm a Blind user and was directed to this discussion thread for my query on using Zotero with screen-readers. I suppose NVDA gives better access to Zotero than JAWS. But, could some of you tell me how to add an item from a website? I press control+shift+S on amazon.in page, but nothing happens. The basic things are still not clear to me... I'll be grateful if someone could tell me how exactly to add details from a page, how to retreave the data from the library and so on. Also, is it better for the blind users to have the stand-alone application installed?
  • aurimas
    I press control+shift+S on amazon.in page, but nothing happens.
    Could you provide an exact URL from amazon.in that doesn't work? It's possible that amazon.in is not supported in general (Amazon tends to be a bit finicky). Try saving from http://www.worldcat.org/title/inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations/oclc/167332
    I'll be grateful if someone could tell me how exactly to add details from a page
    I'm not sure if you mean this in some other way than via Ctrl+Shift+S.
    how to retreave the data from the library and so on
    Retrieve in what way? To cite in a paper?

    Firefox extension and Zotero Standalone should be pretty comparable, though I don't know that for sure. In general, they are almost the same, but, for example, some localization data is not available in Zotero Standalone, so other things _may_ be missing too.

    It would be great if you can ask specific questions or make specific suggestions, since I don't think anyone on this forum has a lot of experience implementing compatibility for visually (or otherwise) impaired. We would certainly appreciate comments about what you find difficult to accomplish. I know that in the past we've had requests to make moving items between collections easier (without relying on drag-and-drop), which, unfortunately, is still not implemented.
  • Muruganandan
    dear aurimas,
    thanks for your prompt reply. I learned that the shortcut control+Shift+S works only after activating Zotero by pressing control+shift+Z. Still I am not able to identify when a page details get saved to Zotero. Now I do it in this way, not sure if some shorter way is available: I press control+shift+Z(Zotero menu appears), then press the same again (cursor moves out of the menu), then press Control+Shift+S twice. Now I find the page details added to the Zotero library.

    "Retrieve in what way?": I mean, how to access and retrieve the PDF files and bibliographical details from the Zotero library outside Mozila browser? Is it possible to retreave PDF files and other details outside Mozila? Of course the details are available in MS Word, but not the PDF files... I thought it'll be better if i can access the PDF files directly from the Zotero library in stead of opening the Mozila and then opening the file from there. I'll tell you why, I need to run OCR on some of the PDF files using the Kurzweil 1000 application, hence its better to access the files directly.

    certain suggestions (only as a beginner): within the Zotero tabs, so many edit boxes and combo boxes appear, but none of their titles are readable with the NVDA screen-reader. For instance, I am not able to recognize which one is column for author, title, journal, year and so on. I only guess with the details added therein. But for the columns/edit boxes left empty, I don't know what it is. In MS word citation tab, the column titles are readable with the screen-readers so that I know what to enter where. it'll be useful if Zotero can be made accessible in that way.
    As you mentioned, moving between the collections is not possible with screen-readers. Hope this will be resolved in near future...

    I'm quite new to Zotero and still learning to work with this fascinating tool. Will come up with more specific doubts and suggestions soon.
    By the way, being the most efficient tool for consolidating and organizing research materials and bibliographical details, Zotero is definitely a great tool for the Visually impaired. With me, I use to manually enter the bibliographical details and need to depend on my sighted friends/readers for knowing and proof-reading the details. Also its comparatively a bit time-consuming task for a visually impaired person to search for bibliographical details. Its great Zotero does these works wonderfully! Its also a convenience for me that the articles found through JSTOR are saved automatically. as an added benefit, In stead of the numbers given for the file, Zotero saves the files by the title and author name.
    I will also take up the accessibility issues related to Zotero with the developers of NVDA screen-readers and request their help too.

    thank you.
  • aurimas
    edited February 22, 2015
    Regarding Ctrl+Shift+S, you shouldn't need to open Zotero first. This might vary to some extent based on where your cursor is positioned and what other extensions you have installed (something that might use the same shortcut for some action).

    I didn't realize that NVDA was free and open source. I'll download it when I have some more time and give it a go with Zotero myself. Hopefully, I should be able to address most of the issues in this thread.

    As for retrieving metadata from Zotero library, that would only be available through Zotero (either Standalone or in Firefox. you can use both side-by-side btw). For PDFs, you actually have a couple options depending on your other needs.

    If you want to continue using Zotero sync via zotero.org or a WebDAV provider, then you have to leave the PDFs inside Zotero's default storage structure, which is difficult to navigate without Zotero's help. However, when you import PDFs using Zotero URL bar button, the actual files (not directories) are automatically renamed based on metadata. You can customize this behavior to some extent natively in Zotero. ZotFile (a Zotero add-on) offers some more advanced customization. In any case, this allows you to create a "Saved Search" folder in Windows that would display all the PDFs in a single place and then allow you to browse them based on file name.

    If you are OK syncing your files via third-party sync services, like DropBox or Google Drive (this is not an option for working in Zotero groups), or you don't care about syncing at all, you can use ZotFile to convert your file attachments to linked files and move them out of Zotero's storage directory into whatever directory structure you want. It can even be based on item metadata. Here's a tutorial on using ZotFile https://www.gettingthingstech.com/zotero-workflow-zotfile/ (maybe someone else can point to a better source)
  • adamsmith
    To add to this with respect to accessing files outside of Zotero (i.e. what you call retrieving files): For individual pdfs, you can also do that using the "Show File" option in the context menu when looking at a specific item. That will open your file browser (like Windows Explorer) to the folder holding that item.

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