Zotero 7 beta: Accessibility with JAWS

dstillman Zotero Team
edited April 21, 2024
This discussion was created from comments split from: Available for beta testing: Improved accessibility of citation dialog.
  • lgnadolskis
    Hello, thank you very much for your improvements in accessibility. I haven't had the chance of trying the citations editor yet, but I have a couple of general comments on the zotero app for windows.
    First, using jaws I have to use ctrl down arrow to navigate among the items on my collection. It would be better if this remained unchanged from previous versions of the app, where just the down arrow was enough.

    Second, I am trying to find a way to sort my collection by date of the publication, instead of alphabetic order of the title. I am not yet able to find a way to do this with jaws.

    I believe that a document with precise keyboard commands would be a very useful addition to Zotero's documentation.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited April 22, 2024
    (Please start new threads for new issues — the thread you posted to was specifically about the citation dialog. I've moved this to a new thread.)
    First, using jaws I have to use ctrl down arrow to navigate among the items on my collection.
    We'll look into this.
    Second, I am trying to find a way to sort my collection by date of the publication, instead of alphabetic order of the title. I am not yet able to find a way to do this with jaws.
    Sorting can be done by right-clicking on the column headers, but we've added sorting and column visibility options to the View menu for the next beta.
  • lgnadolskis
    I apologise for posting on the previous tread.
    Jaws says blank multiple times when I try navigating anywhere on the app.
    Is there a way to access the column headers directly?
    Thank you very much.
    Kind regards.
  • abaevbog Zotero Team
    edited April 22, 2024
    @lgnadolskis it is true that JAWS does struggle with some components. Though I have not yet been able to reproduce the arrow navigation and the "blank" issues you are describing.
    Jaws says blank multiple times when I try navigating anywhere on the app.
    Can you describe this behavior more? Am I understanding correctly that if you tab onto any element with JAWS enabled, all it announces is "blank"? For me, JAWS does not 100% correctly announce the content of editable fields (e.g. in the info section) and the rows of the item list (both known issues). But, for instance, the buttons in the toolbar are announced as expected (e.g. "New item", "Add attachment", "New note").
    First, using jaws I have to use ctrl down arrow to navigate among the items on my collection.
    I was testing with JAWS on factory settings and did not experience that - how far away is your setup from what JAWS is out of the box? It is possible for you to test to see if this happens with default settings?

    Also are you on the last JAWS version and are you on windows 10 or 11? Any additional info that you think could help to reproduce this behavior is welcome too



  • abaevbog Zotero Team
    The issue of JAWS not properly announcing names of items from the items list during navigation with arrow keys should be fixed in the last beta build.
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