Upgrade StorageScreen Reader accessibility - Keyboard shortcuts
Hello,
As a new graduate student in HCC program at University of Maryland Baltimore County who is legally blind, I am using NVDA screen reader as my assistive technology and Firefox as my web browser. It is about three months that I have found Zotero Standalone combined with Firefox plugin the most screen reader accessible reference management tool for Windows. Although it is one of the best and most accessible tools in this regard, it lacks some keyboard accessibility features. If these keyboard access shortcuts are added to this amazing tool, we, screen reader users, will benefit a lot. I list some of these below. I would be more than happy if this discussion can lead to a comprehensive list of shortcut keys that can be added to the software.
1. Currently, moving items between collections can be done through drag and drop with mouse. Shortcut keys and context menu commands for this functionality are so useful: "Move Item/Collection", "Paste Item/Collection".
2. The "Add New Item" in the menu bar doesn't include "Add Stored File copy" while it is in the list of menu items when the "Add New Item" is pressed in the toolbar. The toolbar is not keyboard accessible and I have to do mouse simulation with my screen reader to reach it.
3. Deleting an item from a collection or entire library is only possible by right-clicking and selecting the corresponding menu item in the context menu. shortcut keys can help a lot in this regard to increase the speed.
4. Zotero Standalone can have a context menu entry in Windows Explorer so that we can right-click on an item such as a pdf file and choose to add the item to Zotero. Currently this addition is possible through drag and drop which is very time consuming using a screen reader.
5. The zotero button in Firefox, located next to the address bar, needs combination of several key strokes to reach via a screen reader. it would be very helpful if a Firefox shortcut can be assigned to it to open the menu under that button using the shortcut key or simulating the pressing of that button to add the paper directly to zotero Standalone.
Sincerely yours
Ali abdolrahmani
aliab1@umbc.edu
As a new graduate student in HCC program at University of Maryland Baltimore County who is legally blind, I am using NVDA screen reader as my assistive technology and Firefox as my web browser. It is about three months that I have found Zotero Standalone combined with Firefox plugin the most screen reader accessible reference management tool for Windows. Although it is one of the best and most accessible tools in this regard, it lacks some keyboard accessibility features. If these keyboard access shortcuts are added to this amazing tool, we, screen reader users, will benefit a lot. I list some of these below. I would be more than happy if this discussion can lead to a comprehensive list of shortcut keys that can be added to the software.
1. Currently, moving items between collections can be done through drag and drop with mouse. Shortcut keys and context menu commands for this functionality are so useful: "Move Item/Collection", "Paste Item/Collection".
2. The "Add New Item" in the menu bar doesn't include "Add Stored File copy" while it is in the list of menu items when the "Add New Item" is pressed in the toolbar. The toolbar is not keyboard accessible and I have to do mouse simulation with my screen reader to reach it.
3. Deleting an item from a collection or entire library is only possible by right-clicking and selecting the corresponding menu item in the context menu. shortcut keys can help a lot in this regard to increase the speed.
4. Zotero Standalone can have a context menu entry in Windows Explorer so that we can right-click on an item such as a pdf file and choose to add the item to Zotero. Currently this addition is possible through drag and drop which is very time consuming using a screen reader.
5. The zotero button in Firefox, located next to the address bar, needs combination of several key strokes to reach via a screen reader. it would be very helpful if a Firefox shortcut can be assigned to it to open the menu under that button using the shortcut key or simulating the pressing of that button to add the paper directly to zotero Standalone.
Sincerely yours
Ali abdolrahmani
aliab1@umbc.edu
Some of these may already have solutions, though.
2.) If you install the Zutilo add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/zutilo-utility-for-zotero/ You can configure a keyboard shortcut for "Open new item Menu" which makes this accessible via keyboard. Zutilo itself isn't built for accessibility, so setting it up the first time may be cumbersome, but once that's done that should work (and more generally be useful for keyboard shortcuts).
3.) Ctrl+Delete actually does delete an item from the library, as does simple delete when you're looking at the "My Library" view
4.) I don't think that will happen--it's hard to do for a cross-platform app--but addressing 2.) would give you a keyboard way of doing that, correct? (Store copy of file is the same as drag&drop).
5.) I'm not quite sure which button you're referring to, but both can be accessed via keyboard: The button that opens Zotero in Firefox that is next to the address bar--that is accessible via Ctrl+Shift+Z.
Or the button that's actually in the address bar that adds items to Zotero from supported webpages, which is accessible via ctrl+shift+S
Hope that helps!
I have to say I am pretty happy with it so far! Good job to the people developing this.
I am however running into one of the same problems as the original poster of this thread. Namely the first one. I haven't been able to figure out how to put items in collections using the keyboard. This is a major roadblock for me as I am sure you are aware how important it is to be able to organize references into different groups.
Does some way exist to do this using only the keyboard?
If not, please take this into account as it is very important for users such as myself that can only operate a computer using the keyboard.
A solution like OP suggested, having an "move to collection..." in the context menu for an item would work fine. Alternatively, I can also imagine another solution, where when an item is selected, the user can ctrl + c and then once they have selected another collection, pressing ctrl + v would add the item there.
This is a super important feature for me as a screen reader user and is causing me a lot of headaches.
It also seems that this is a simple feature. basically just adding an extra menu item to the right click menu for items in zotero library, so the fact that there hasn't been any progress in that for 6 years now is truly frustrating :(
I'm not sure if it provides correct screen reader feedback though, e.g. with the search results -- I thought people had tested that successfully in the past, but not positive about that part.
As far as adding items to additional collections goes, all I've managed to work out is to select the items and export them. Then go into the new collection and import them. To avoid dragging and dropping files I use the "add attachment" option in an item's context menu.
Sorry for the delay on adding items to collections via the keyboard. We have some work underway on that and should have something soon.
Another thing is citing multiple resources: How to create multiple citations using Classic add citation dialog in an accessible way? The arrows to move selected resources/references are not accessible or accessed by a screen reader like JAWS. Is there another way to activate the source we are selecting to move to the multiple citation area? Thank you in advance!
Also for the option for multiple citations, the arrows on that to move citations over is not found by JAWS/accessible/reading.
The classic citation dialog isn't really being developed anymore, and we'll be overhauling the regular dialog, so it'd be helpful to know where you're having trouble with the regular dialog.
Here is why: I can't type information into the regular citation box. If I do happen to get information in that box, JAWS won't read the information that appears based on the search and as I navigate through the choices, I don't know which option I am choosing.
I can share a video with you to show the issue. Just let me know.
Also, Why classic view isn't being developed? Again, this is the only accessible way of doing intext citations.
On the topic (and while I'm by no means an expert), there are also what look like fairly significant accessibility issues in the beta:
- I'm not able to navigate between tabs with the keyboard
- The tab operator doesn't provide any visual feedback for several options (e.g. there are two tabs after the search PDF item that I have no idea what they do - the actual but).
- I'm also not able to select any text in the PDF reader using the keyboard.
Getting someone with more experience to help with some testing there would be very helpful (apart from being the right thing to do, you're likely aware that accessibility is being watched increasingly closely by US universities, several of which, mine included, have gotten into legal trouble for web/IT accessibility-related issues).
I would really love it if Zotero could address those accessibility features.
@"Justin MH Salisbury" - I'm not affiliated with the Zotero developers in anyway, but we do have some Zotero documentation. We'd be very happy to chat how to make the documentation more accessible or do a webinar if you can make some introductions.
As for navigating the main Zotero windows, @Justin I think the unlabeled or poorly labeled fields you're encountering involve the tag selector. I would recommend hiding the tag selector if you're a screen reader user, unless you're actually working with tags. Navigate to the view menu, then layout, then uncheck the tag selector. At this point There are two main panes you'll be interested in - the libraries/collections treeview, and the list of the selected collection's contents. You can tab and shift+tab easily back and forth between these two areas once the tag selector is hidden.
I have not actually used Zotero to read my references, since Zotero mostly supports the PDF format and most of the PDF's I download have very poor accessibility. I store the full-text links to EPub or HTML versions in Zotero when available, and I can walk through this process if it's helpful to anyone. Mostly I use the collections to manage references by project section and to generate properly formatted citations.
I've been using Zotero with a screen reader for the past 3 years. I haven't figured everything out, but I'm happy to brainstorm solutions. I threw together some tips for another user a few months ago and can share them. I have not fully explored the newest version, but my initial sense is that it should work similarly once the PDF reader is turned off.
There's one thing that I've not been able to manage on any of the platforms however so I'd be really grateful if someone has found a solution and could let me know. Alternatively, if there's no accessible solution, please could this be fixed? The problem is that I regularly want to generate bibliographies from my collections without a document containing citations inserted through the Zotero plugin. However, I can't select multiple items in a collection except where I am selecting consecutive items. So if I want to select an item written by Smith then another by Williams, I have to select all the items in between those authors. This is obviously not practical. I've found the keyboard solution which theoretically allows this operation. The trouble is that Jaws won't read the items that the cursor is passing over as I arrow down the list. This means that it's impossible to know which items to select. Has anyone found any kind of work around for this issue? If so, I'd love to hear from you.
Regards
Olivia
We'll see if we can fix the non-contiguous selection issue. (To explain for others, you can select non-contiguous items via the keyboard by using Ctrl-up/down-arrow and space bar, but as @Enth8406 notes, it currently doesn't read the row under the cursor in that mode.)
Thanks heaps for making the creater buttons accessible on the desktop version. That's an enormous help for me because now I don't have to keep switching between the desktop and IOS apps to enter things like book sections where there are editors and authors.
On the other issue about being unable to use a screenreader to select non-contiguous items in the library, hopefully there'll be a fix for that soon? In the meantime, I've come up with a work-around for anyone who, like me, wants to generate bibliographies from the library without having used those refs in in-text citations. What I do is create a different collection and copy all the refs that I want in my bibliography into that collection. Then I can go and select every ref which will now be contiguous in that collection and generate the bibliography. It takes a bit of mucking around to shift the relevant refs into the collection but it's still way better than having to rely on a sighted person to do it. It's also way faster and more reliable than generating the bibliography from my entire library then going through the bibliography afterward and deleting the unwanted refs, which is what I was doing before. Hope this helps someone.