Accessibility: Getting to the toolbar buttons

mweiler1
I am sighted and JAWS certified. I have included a video that shows how I can not access the toolbar using the keyboard.

WCAG 2.0 success criteria 2.1.1 explains the importance of all content being operable by keyboard.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/193oWbxddHhLicxhZ3iV6HVnD2-O9vjgw/view
  • adamsmith
    I don't work for Zotero and I don't think the way the toolbar doesn't work with the keyboard is good accessibility design, but my understanding is that their intention is to make all functionality available outside of the toolbar, which is apparently hard to make keyboard accessible (and would require lots of tabbing.)

    As far as I can tell, currently, the functions that aren't accessible via keyboard otherwise are
    - New Library (especially the RSS feed option -- group option is just a link to the web interface for creating a group)
    - Add by identifier (that can be defined as a keyboard shortcut via Zutilo)
    - Link to File and Store Copy of File under the New Item/Green plus sign (I haven't found any way to do this using keyboard)

    Advanced Search, as well as New Item and New Note are available through the top-level menu; adding notes and attachments are accessible through the context menu for individual items.

    I'd be curious what Zotero's plans here are. It'd seem pretty straightforward to add the remaining inaccessible functionality to the
  • dstillman
    In Zotero 6.0.22, available now, all toolbar buttons are accessible via the keyboard. For technical reasons, a focus indicator currently only appears on Windows and Linux, not macOS, but it works on all three platforms. As adamsmith notes, most of the options were available via the menus, and we'll be adding the additional ones to the menus (where it's easier to add shortcut keys, etc.) in an upcoming version.
  • mweiler1
    Thanks for the update dstillman. That means some new functionality is available in 6.022 for users who couldn't use the mouse. The add by identifier functionality should be greatly enjoyed.

    One thing I noticed is that "toolbar" isn't being announced when using JAWS and tabbing to the first item in the toolbar. Hearing "toolbar" gives a clue to the user to use the toolbar keyboard pattern (e.g., left/right keys). I could create a video that shows that if you'd like?
  • dstillman
    The whole thing is a toolbar, and NVDA, at least, announces "toolbar" at first start (when the search bar has focus) and when tabbing/shift-tabbing into it from elsewhere. When Shift-Tabbing to the New Collection button from the search bar, it says "New Collection, button 1 of 7". (For Locate and Sync, it says "3 of 5" and "5 of 5", respectively, for some reason.)

    I noticed a few other things while testing this, so we'll keep working on it. There will also be general improvements later this year in Zotero 7, which will be based on a much newer version of Firefox with improved accessibility features.
  • qqbb
    If the toolbar has focus, it would be great if pressing Esc could return focus to the items list. Currently, it's difficult to exit the toolbar navigation.

    Similarly, when editing a field in the item Info pane, it would be great if pressing Esc once or twice returned focus to the items list. It seems to me that the items list is the central UI element in the library tab that should get focus by default.

    In the PDF reader, the central PDF pane gets focus when pressing Esc. I'd expect pressing Esc to have a similar effect in the library tab.
  • dstillman
    If the toolbar has focus, it would be great if pressing Esc could return focus to the items list. Currently, it's difficult to exit the toolbar navigation.
    I'm open to this, though I'm not aware of other apps that do it for toolbar buttons (at least on macOS). Some browsers and other programs do it for an address/search bar. I personally like it, though.

    There's also nothing really special about toolbar navigation, since it uses arrow keys, so Tab still jumps you out of it. Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-L also still works to take to the collections pane. (I do think there should be a quicker way to get to the items list from a library or collection than pressing tab four times to get past the tag selector…)
    Similarly, when editing a field in the item Info pane, it would be great if pressing Esc once or twice returned focus to the items list.
    I think that's a regression. Pretty sure that used to happen. We'll fix.
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