Accessibility in 5.0 Standalone?

jbrune
edited September 15, 2017
Where does Zotero 5.0 now stand in terms of accessibility for blind and low-vision users? Seems like the Firefox version benefited from Mozilla's accessibility features so I'm wondering what happens now that 5.0 is stand alone. I frequently have blind students in my classes, as I do this semester for my history methods course. I have required my methods students to use Zotero and they love it but it needs to be accessible to all if I am to keep using it. Thank you very much for your work.
  • dstillman
    Zotero is still based on the same Mozilla technology (which has been behind both Zotero for Firefox and Zotero Standalone), so 5.0 shouldn't be any different. If your students run into any problems, of course, you or they can let us know.
  • mmdecarl
    With an increasing university emphasis on web accessibility & ADA Compliance on all resources we promote, we need to be able to refer to current accessibility information for Zotero. Is there one place we can find an Accessibility Statement and VPAT? It would be very helpful to have specific statements/information because we do get asked about this. Thank you so much.
  • doctor.omara
    Hello

    I appreciate your effort to help us.

    I am blind I use screen reader.

    I face a problem to read the fields in Zotero. if the data of my source is not complete , I have to complete it but I can not because the screen reader can not read the fields.

    Please define the fields: first author ,,, second author,, title ,,,etc.

    Kind regards
  • devrtodd
    Good morning,

    I just upgraded from the Firefox extension to the stand alone version on a new computer. I am experiencing two access issues.

    1. When entering or reviewing data in a record, field names are not announced. This makes it difficult to know what part of the record is being edited. Am I in the author or the abstract fields, for example. A work around for this is to open the record directly in the Zotero site.

    2. I don't seem to be able to access any of the tool bar items. Example: Add by identifier. Making shortcut key commands to directly access these items seems essential.

    I'm using the JAWS screen reader,
  • devrtodd
    Part of my previous post is missing.

    In the old FF extension, one could use the "virtual cursor" mode to find and activate most of the toolbar items. A few remained unlabelled. Trial and error showed their function. Activating the virtual cursor reveals no text in the stand-alone version.

    Thank you,

    Todd
  • dmaley
    I just met with a blind student who is trying to use Zotero. We could not get it to work because of problems navigating among the 3 panels. Is there a way to tab quickly from inside one panel to the next. He has a mac platform with google chrome. I also gather that apple pages (which is what he has been using) is still locked down from Zotero. Would welcome comments.
  • qqbb
    Zotero has some basic keyboard shortcuts which can be set in "Preferences" -> "Advanced" -> "Shortcuts":
    https://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/advanced#shortcuts

    The interface can also often be navigated using "Tab" (forwards) and "Shift+Tab" (backwards) and the arrow keys. See Zotero's documentation:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/keyboard_shortcuts

    For an improved keyboard navigation, I would recommend the Zutilo add-on:
    https://github.com/willsALMANJ/Zutilo
    See e.g. here:
    https://github.com/willsALMANJ/Zutilo/blob/master/docs/COMMANDS.md#navigating-the-ui-and-editing-items-via-keyboard-shortcuts
  • dstillman
    @dmaley: Nearly everything in Zotero is accessible via the keyboard — you can easily tab between panes — but unfortunately due to its current underlying architecture Zotero doesn't work well with VoiceOver on a Mac, so VoiceOver often won't properly announce different parts of the interface as you navigate to them. Zotero is based on Firefox and should work about as well as the Firefox interface itself (not necessarily webpage navigation, but the main interface), so if there are parts of Firefox that work better, we may be able to improve similar components in Zotero.

    In our testing, JAWS on Windows does significantly better. There are definitely some areas where things could be improved — when I test it, it only sometimes announces the field titles in the right-hand pane, for example — but we know that people do use Zotero with JAWS.

    Apple's Pages still has no plugin architecture, so it's not possible for us to build a plugin for Pages.

    For areas that are problematic in the desktop app, using the web library — in particular the new beta web library, accessible from a link at the top of the web library page — may be an option. We know that some people use both.

    If there are specific things that people are having trouble with, please continue to let us know, and we'll do our best to improve them.
  • Carel.Ewald.1
    Using latest jaws and latest Zotero update, the drop down list is not spoken anymore, so no can do selecting in text citations anymore. I go to the zotero menu, find add/edit citation, then deactivate quick keys, and now if i start typing the author name nothing is read.
    Is there another way to copy/paste authors into a word?
  • dstillman
    @Carel.Ewald.1: Since that's a specific issue, let's address that in your other thread.
  • dmaley
    Further to the comment from dstillman on 20 January:The problem was VoiceOver not matching the interface, which made it impossible for the user to navigate.
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