accessibility: voice-recognition
I use Dragon naturally speaking, the standard voice recognition software. I am considering switching to Zotero, but I am having trouble editing bibliographic records (a problem I have not encountered in either Refworks or Endnote). Unfortunately, my guess is that Zotero has trouble recognizing dictated text because it is a browser plug-in. Some features that able-bodied users especially like (for example, the ability to open PDFs within a browser window) don't play well with assistive technology. Dragon is so resource intensive that I am generally unable to work in databases such as ProQuest if PDFs open in the browser window.
Why is there no information on accessibility on Zotero's website? Given Zotero's stated mission (and sources of funding), there should be a commitment to universal access (I suspect Zotero is not 504 and ADA compliant) and prominent information available on the website regarding how to use Zotero with the assistive technologies commonly used by disabled academics.
Why is there no information on accessibility on Zotero's website? Given Zotero's stated mission (and sources of funding), there should be a commitment to universal access (I suspect Zotero is not 504 and ADA compliant) and prominent information available on the website regarding how to use Zotero with the assistive technologies commonly used by disabled academics.
For sites like ProQuest that force you to read PDFs in the browser, you can actually make Firefox open them in Acrobat, or make Firefox download them. See this page. But even better, you can save the reference in Zotero, which will in most cases download the PDF for you, and as soon as the PDF is attached to an entry in your Zotero library you can open it outside of the browser (if you set the above hidden pref).
The reason for this is almost certainly lack of resources - Zotero has minimal staff and relies on community development (and documentation) otherwise. Testing (and tweaking software to work with) accessibility tools is resource intensive.
If the problem is indeed the fact that it's a browser plugin, there is very little anyone can do to change that. For anything else, more precise descriptions of the type of problems you encounter would certainly help to address them.
Note that Zotero is open-source and not for profit - many improvements that have been implemented are either based on user input or actually written by users.
All this is not meant as an excuse (as I said - no affiliation with Zotero or GMU), but just to highlight the type of constraints Zotero deals with.
Quite separately, I am curious about the foundation of your legal argument. As I understand the terms of the Rehabilitation Act, it imposes (in Section 508) a duty on Federal agencies, such that software and websites owned and operated by government must satisfy accessibility requirements. Grant recipients are required to adhere to accessibility requirements for their own staff under Section 504, but on my reading, at least, this is a duty owed to employees and prospective employees. Is the duty that you describe contained elsewhere in the Act? This is not meant as a counter-argument; as I say, I am genuinely curious.
For example, in order to assist users with disabilities, all mouse-driven Zotero functionality should also be accessible via keyboard input. To the best of our knowledge, any voice-driven control should also be able to access this functionality.
If there is specific functionality that users are unable to access due to a disability, we are committed to being responsive to those users' needs. Since Zotero is a community-driven project, as others have already noted, it is possible that some features have been incrementally added that are not, to use the example above, keyboard accessible. Although the Zotero project has continued to grow long behind the limits of its initial grants -- the IMLS funding ran out over two years ago -- we are of course committed to meeting the needs of all of our users.
Now, on the specific problem that you've encountered, what exactly is happening when you use Zotero? Are you able to access the individual text input fields in a given item? Is it that you cannot enter text into those fields? If not, are you able to enter text into other input fields in Firefox, say, for example in a web form? Let us know what's happening, and we'll go from there.
One problem here is that database vendors, in the interest of protecting their copyright, strip their indexing when documents are downloaded into Adobe --it is therefore impossible for disabled users to keyword search documents like able-bodied users can when the document opens within a browser. Jstor thankfully doesn't do this, but most of the commercial database vendors do, and they won't acknowledge the practice as it is clearly discriminatory.
As to the problem with Zotaro, I suspect you won't fix this without testing it with Dragon (you should probably do this with a screen reader as well). The minimum system requirements recommended by Nuance don't come close to what is required to conduct online research while running their voice-recognition software and working with large footnoted documents in Word (the only word processor Dragon supports); at the same time, the database vendors tend to blame Nuance for any problems users encounter. Because I work on an i7 desktop with 12 GB of RAM at home, I'm pretty sure the problem is with Zotero, not my computer set up. The problem I'm experiencing isn't lack of access to a "specific functionality," it is not being able to use the program at all.
Dragon's support for Firefox could be a lot better, but I rarely have problems entering text into web forms.
If you're referring to notes, are you able to use the demos on the TinyMCE site? (Zotero embeds the TinyMCE editor for rich-text editing.)
Either way, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with PDF handling. I'm not sure what you mean by this. How would a disability affect whether you can search by keywords? We're happy to help try to debug this, but be warned that Zotero doesn't really have much to do with stuff like text input. Any system that's properly generating text should in theory be indistinguishable from keyboard input, and the Mozilla application framework should do the rest. (For example, a properly functioning barcode scanner converts a bar code into a string of numbers and simulates keyboard input for those numbers. You can use one with Zotero's Add Item by Identifier functionality, but Zotero certainly doesn't know anything about barcode scanners. All it has is a text box.)
But if there's anything we can do on our end to improve accessibility, we'll of course try to do it.
In general, it seems to me that Zotero may help your cause in online research rather than frustrate it. For example, it can automatically download PDF files with references you save from repositories like ScienceDirect, JSTOR, ProQuest, et cetera, thereby subverting the annoying habit of many of these sites to open PDFs for you. This gives you full control over the PDFs (I outlined above how you can force them to open outside of the browser). It can also index your PDFs, so that you can do a fulltext search over your references in Zotero rather than in some online environment.
Of course all this depends on your being able to access Zotero's functionality. Sean and Dan's questions above should help to narrow down on why it is currently not working for you.
I should've been more specific: having a disability doesn't necessarily affect whether one can search by keywords, but using assistive technology at the computer does. Here's how it works. Serving up PDFs in browser windows conflicts with most of the assistive technologies people use. Therefore, the accessibility guidelines in Adobe require users who use ANY assistive technology to open all PDFs within Adobe rather than a browser. Now, when able-bodied users perform a keyword search in a fulltext online database such as EBSCOhost, they can click on individual items and view the PDF within a web browser. Usually, one can search within that PDF. The most obvious utility of such a search is instantly locating where your initial search term occurred in the document. However, what you are viewing in the PDF browser is an image--when I download that image to my computer and open it within Adobe, as I must do in order to use voice recognition software, it is no longer searchable. The vast majority of database vendors do not include an embedded text layer in the image (JStor does): because they strip the text layer from the PDF, they discriminate against users who rely on assistive technology to access the information in their databases because such users can't access the PDF within a browser window. Here is what Adobe has to say about this issue:
“The first step in making scanned documents accessible is to perform OCR on the scanned page image. Acrobat has an OCR text recognition feature that allows you to apply OCR to the scanned pages.
The resulting PDF files contain computer-generated text, which is necessary for making the file's information accessible via screen readers and other assistive technologies. You may need to further process the files at this point by using the accessibility authoring tools in Acrobat to add structure (tags), alternate text for graphics that appear in the file, and accessible form fields if applicable. You may also need to adjust the reading and tab order for interactive PDF file components.”
More here: http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/
What database vendors do is strip the OCR from their documents when they are downloaded into Adobe, making them inaccessible to the very users who rely most on these features.
The fact that opening a PDF file outside of Firefox is within Zotero’s “hidden preferences” ("launchNonNativeFiles") is an example of the kind of cultural shift that needs to happen. While many might feel that the choice of opening a PDF within a browser or not is merely a preference, users who rely on assistive technology can be completely locked out by hiding this kind of information.
Sean: if the Zotero “has always been designed with the needs of users with disabilities in mind,” then it should be upfront about that fact and provide pages dedicated to accessibility that explain manipulation of font sizes, keyboard input, voice recognition, and use with screen readers.
Because Zotero is hosted at a major US university, testing the software with assistive technology is not a financial barrier. You could, for example, contact the Office of Disability Services at George Mason and mess around with Zotero using the most common technologies used by disabled academics. I suspect you even could get disabled faculty and students to do such testing for you.
In your case, you could also just uninstall the adobe plugin entirely.
On a sidenote, I understand your frustration, but you are mistaken about pdfs.
Most pdfs by now are not from scanned documents anymore - e.g. the pdfs that come from the major journal presses all come with fully integrated text and you can search through them - both in plugin and standalone pdf readers.
The only two major databases I'm aware of that rely on a lot of scans are EBSCO and JSTOR. JSTOR has a while ago OCRd all their documents, EBSCO not (yet?). That means that any user can search through JSTOR pdfs. No user can search through the scanned pdfs on EBSCO - plugin or not. I have not once seen a pdf that behaves differently in a standalone reader (which I use a lot) and a plugin - I doubt that would even be technically feasible.
But I can't search those either. Nor can anyone else.
Obviously without a link I can't test this for a particular file, but I just looked at the periodicals database and I can positively not search those pdfs - and it doesn't matter how I open them. (Proquest actually calls them "Scanned Image PDFs" to highlight that).
Also, I think you may have misunderstood the passage on OCR you quoted from Adobe's site. This doesn't really have anything to do with database providers, who may or may not OCR image PDFs to begin with (or include the layers if they do). It just means that users of Adobe Acrobat (not Reader) can OCR their own PDFs and generate hidden text layers. Some Zotero users do this, and then they reindex them in Zotero so that they're searchable via Zotero's search as well.
As for the actual issue you reported: First, just to be clear, only notes use TinyMCE, so if notes work in Zotero then the demos on the TinyMCE site are irrelevant.
By fields not working, you mean that if you click in, say, the Title field or Call Number field of an item and try to insert text via voice recognition, Firefox freezes?
How about the quick search bar? Tags?
Have you checked in Task Manager to see the CPU usage of Firefox and/or Dragon when this happens?
I use OCR extensively. My point is that disabled users should not have to go through a resource and time consuming extra step in order to access information they retrieve from database vendors when able-bodied users enjoy instant access. In my case, this involves saving files to disk and OCRing files on another computer as the computers I use are not powerful enough to run Adobe’s OCR function in the background while I am working. For me, this is not a big a deal (I am not visually impaired, nor do I need text to speech to understand what I'm reading). But for people who use assistive technology that relies on OCR, this policy is a huge problem. (What database providers don't OCR their images? If the images are not OCRrd, they are not searchable, right?) I have contacted some of the big database vendors about this issue, but they simply don't reply. Librarians are generally not informed about digital accessibility issues, and my experience when I have not been able to get databases to work with Dragon in my library has been that they refer me to either IT or the database vendors themselves. The database vendors don't seem to test their products with assistive technology in the sort of real-life computing environments that academics work in. The lack of information about how to get this stuff to work has serious consequences: when I started using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, it took a few months before I was able to conduct library searches using voice recognition (I was teaching and in the middle of coursework). Moreover, I had to schedule demonstrations with librarians and IT staff to prove to them that the computer setup they had provided didn't actually work using databases like ProQuest and EBSCO. Of course, getting database vendors to not withhold their indexing would benefit all users.
Here are ways Zotero can help.
1. Make Zotero accessible: start with supporting Window-Eyes, JAWS and Dragon Naturally Speaking. Mozilla already does this (http://www.mozilla.org/access/) and identifies accessibility as a major priority. Zotero could probably get funding for this. But part of getting funding would be identifying the problems that researchers who use assistive technology face.
2. Help identify those problems by providing a space for working academics to evaluate the accessibility of the online resources Zotero links with. This would enable academics to develop a set of “best practices” for serving up digital information. My experience is that JStor does this better than anybody else, and one way to start would be to figure out exactly what they do and rank other databases against them. We might assume that such practices had already been developed, especially given the not insignificant amount of funding devoted to assistive technology at U.S. universities. But the barriers for disabled academics are extremely high, and my guess is that there are few people actually utilizing these online resources. For example, at my large public university only about one out of 1000 doctoral students have self identified as disabled to the University, and despite the high incidence of RSI, all the academics I know who admit to using Dragon NaturallySpeaking I have met online.
Regarding your specific questions:
I don't think it is Firefox that is freezing . When I input text into the title field, the text almost never drops into the field. Dragon is working, as is Firefox (I can work in another window, although the moment I click anywhere outside of the box in which I am trying to enter text, the operation in Zotero stops). I am pretty sure this is not a resource issue: there is a small bump in the CPU and memory usage when I dictate into Zotero (this would be much larger on a more mainstream computer, but the Nehalem chip handles Dragon incredibly well), but nothing that could hang the computer up.
I have gotten the info section to work a number of times, and when it does, the text drops right in the box like it should and I can navigate around the different fields, changing text at will. Once it stops working, though, it will hang up indefinitely. Getting out of the Zotero seems to help “reset” it, as does dumping in a new record.
Tags work great: the text drops almost instantaneously into the box.
Text does not drop into the quick search box.
But, when I go to the “related” tab of a record and click “add,” the search box in the pop-up window DOES work. Also, the searching by ISBN/PMID function works fine.
Again: this is an issue for the database providers.
One of them is related to Zotero - the way it performs with standard accessibility software.
The other, the way database providers treat hidden text, has nothing to do with Zotero - I think everyone understands that - but if I understand sean correctly he used it as an example for the types of issues researchers with disabilities face.
I think number two is pretty pointless to discuss here, because no one present will be able to do much about it, while I think it would be great if issues related to number 1 could be removed.
Are you able to use Dragon in all other non-web text boxes in Firefox? The Firefox location and search bars? The search box in the "Get Add-ons" pane of the Add-ons window? The search box in the Organize Bookmarks window? How about text boxes in other Firefox extensions?
Have you tried disabling all other Firefox extensions? Any other patterns you notice?
Can you provide a Report ID after reproducing the problem?
Here are the facts:
1. Because Zotero interferes with entering text in a text box (and here, yes, I am assuming the problem is Zotero rather than Dragon or Firefox), it is not in compliance with the rehabilitation act, section 508.
2. Zotero.org is not accessible. You should therefore not be surprised that you don't have a viable community of people who use this extension who also rely on assistive technology. Many people can't even download your extension.
Frankly, it would be much easier for me to invest time in mastering EndNote, which is 508 compliant. But, they suck and not the least for suing Zotero. Until Zotaro does accessibility testing and incorporates universal access into its design process, I am not particularly interested in what you think this problem “sounds like.”
Please test Dragon in the various input areas that Dan has identified and get back to us. We look forward to your response and to getting Zotero working for you.
Dan: [am I] able to use Dragon in all other non-web text boxes in Firefox?
yes.
The Firefox location and search bars?
yes
The search box in the "Get Add-ons" pane of the Add-ons window?
yes
The search box in the Organize Bookmarks window?
yes
How about text boxes in other Firefox extensions?
I don't use any other extensions that require input.
Sean: I disagree. I think that there would be tremendous value for developers to test Zotero using various assistive technologies. Of course I want to use Zotero--even with my limited experience of messing around with it, I can see all kinds of potential not possible with Refworks and Endnote. But at the end of the day, I would like to see Zotero work for lots of disabled people using lots of different assistive technologies: I don't think you will be able to make Zotero accessible without doing some testing on your end. But I don't know. The people who will know are the folks at Mozilla, as they have gone through this process and my experience with using Dragon In Firefox has been decent (there are things that could be better, but I can use it).
(Note that I'm discussing the specific issue you've reported. While Zotero shouldn't need to do anything to support speech recognition programs, there are things that could be done to improve support for screen readers and accessibility in general. Mozilla provides Accessible XUL Authoring Guidelines, and, though Zotero already follows many of them (e.g., keyboard access, appropriate tab order, font sizing), there are some areas that could be improved. As Zotero is an open-source project with a very small staff, this would seem to be a particularly appropriate area for external developers—or even community members who want to help document problems—to get involved.)
Continuing to troubleshoot your issue, though:
You didn't provide a Report ID after reproducing the problem, and you didn't confirm that you tried disabling other Firefox extensions.
After you place the cursor in, say, the quick search bar, and Dragon fails to insert text, does regular keyboard input still work?
I disabled the other extensions, and something has seriously messed up my sound system. First, Dragon NaturallySpeaking crashed. After multiple restarts, I have got it working, but the quality of the sound is degraded (Dragon is telling me that some other application is now hogging the sound card). I will fuss around with more by turning on extensions one by one and seeing if I can get the sound quality back up to speed. (I am a luddite, and I also disabled plug-ins when I did the extensions because that was the example that showed up on Mozilla's website, but after re-enabling the plug-ins I'm still having problems with sound quality.)
As of this morning, I'm not always able to insert text into the notes field. but if I open a separate browser window, the text drops in right away.
Keyboard input always works, whether or not Zotero is receiving input from Dragon.
Returning to more general issues. . . I think what rubs me the wrong way about these discussions is the lack of recognition that accessibility is a civil rights issue. When a software tool, especially one that is being adopted extremely quickly in the academic community, doesn't work with commonly used assistive technology it should not be treated as just another bug. Moreover, if Zotero is going to make the decision to not support such technologies, it should be upfront about it and clearly state on its website that researchers or institutions who need such support should use one of the commercial products.
Try a thought experiment and ask yourself how things might have gone differently if you had started off by saying "There appears to be a problem with X: where does Zotero stand on these issues and what can I do to help?"
Instead, you started off confrontational, and despite the fact that I and others have challenged you on this, and you yourself have in response apologized, you're now continuing in the same way.
You have also consistently been questioning peoples' motive and intentions. To wit, you write: Where did anyone say they have made "the decision to not support such technologies"? Dan has simply explained that they don't have control over everything that happens within the context of Firefox, nor in PDF files. He's trying hard to understand what the exact problems are, so that he can narrow down what they can do about it.
Making demands and threats against an open source community is not the way to promote the accessibility cause.
Have you considered the possibility of getting someone from Dragon involved in the conversation? Here's the thinking. Bugs (even very important ones) are tracked down by checking the behavior of everything in the chain. As Dan Stillman has pointed out, Firefox and Zotero present standard targets for text input, and nothing appears to be broken there. Dragon is a closed-source proprietary product, and it is not possible for outside developers to see precisely what it is doing when it interacts with Zotero, Firefox or the operating system. No one knows whether Dragon itself is the source of difficulty here, but one of their engineers might well be able to identify the issue very quickly, to everyone's benefit.
Something to consider, anyway.
Now that open source software is becoming more mainstream, there will inevitably be conflict as the open source community adapts to larger communities. The community of potential users of Zotero is largely academic, and that community has developed standards of inclusion and accessibility that, while flawed, are far ahead of those of the open source community. Adjust.
As to Dragon, Nuance has notoriously bad customer support (they enjoy a monopoly, and they act like it). Nuance might be open to overtures directly from Zotero, as I suspect they worked with Mozilla on Firefox. I will contact Knowbrainer (www.knowbrainer.com), who has developed some terrific software to work with Dragon, provides great support, and gives their software away to disabled users (the main market for voice recognition is corporate). They might be willing to start using Zotero and they would actually have the knowledge to help with debugging, which I don't.