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I've been working more with making web content accessible for users with screen readers. For someone new to this like myself you can imagine the frustrations I've come across going from Mac -> Windows or browser -> browser and now Screen Reader -> Screen Reader.

It's also occurred to me that within the screen reader software, users have the ability to tweak settings like Verbosity or Grouping Order. I haven't played around with any settings myself but I have been wondering if anyone has been able to use this to their advantage for a more developer friendly experience?

For example, when using VoiceOver on Mac, I tend to get extra Mac-related instructions which don't appear over the same element in JAWS or NVDA:

"You are currently on a button, inside of a region. To click this button, press Control-Option-Space. To exit this group, press..."

If there was a way to disable these types of instructional announcements without potentially triggering side effects that might disable my ARIA-related attributes & code, then I'd love to stop listening to the same thing for every button I'm testing or developing for.

Has anyone found any other settings that might make for a more developer-friendly experience while working with accessibility?

Bhargav Rao
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Motorcykey
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  • This is a great question. I don't have any immediate answers regarding the settings that you specifically mentioned. However, I've found the visual outline shown by VoiceOver to be extremely helpful in helping me understand what is going on. NVDA does not offer such an outline by default, but there is a plugin that creates one: https://addons.nvda-project.org/addons/focusHighlight.en.html – user729928 Feb 01 '18 at 16:10

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In Mac OS Catalina (and possibly earlier versions, I haven't checked), you can prevent the 'You are currently on a button' instructions by unticking the 'Speak instructions' box in VoiceOver Utility -> Verbosity -> Hints

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monkeyboy
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This post reads a little tone def to me, if I'm being honest. If I were to create a corresponding StackA11y post, the title might read:

How to get developers to have empathy for people with disabilities.

While I appreciate the fact that you are developing with Accessibility in mind, asking "How do I make this more convenient for myself" while making the assumption that it is anything but your content that is the problem... well, you're asking the wrong question. The proper question is:

Why isn't my content accessible?

In this case more specifically:

Why is VoiceOver detecting this button as being in any special type of region?

Just because this doesn't show up in JAWS/NVDA doesn't mean that it's not your content's problem. Dealing with UserAgent/Operating system issues is part of developing accessible content. In this case, related to the fact that you apparently have a button inside of a region, where you don't believe this should be the case.

There are two fixes for this:

A: You actually do have a button inside a region, and for some reason your markup is not compatible with your browser/AT combination in windows, and you need to fix it, so that you get this special behavior in your windows environment.

B: You don't have a button inside of any special region (UL, TABLE, etc), you're utilizing these tags for their visual styling, and need to mark something as presentational, so that you Mac environment DOES NOT detect this special scenario.

It is fortunate that you did not utilize a special "I can see, so don't share this information with me" setting in VoiceOver, otherwise you would not have caught this glaring Accessibility issue with YOUR content.

Apologies for the snarky tone. :)

MobA11y
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    Hi! Thanks for the feedback! Any lack of empathy toward the target audience was certainly not my intention nor was my own convenience. The unfortunate truth here is that I am a consultant building on top of existing code and am at the whim of the client's needs & expectations. If they're new to the subject matter then I need to make sure I'm capable enough to be able to step in, raise my hand and explain why things are happening while knowing how to offer the best experience for their users. In order to do so, I need a deeper understanding of a11y software & its quirks than I currently have. – Motorcykey Feb 03 '18 at 17:31
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    Yeah, sometimes I was more stern for the sake of other developers who happen to cross by. Clearly if you're originating questions about accessibility, you're not the one that was directly pointed at :). If you need more information, hit me up on LinkedIn. I have a lot of stuff I can share, but this isn't the completely open forum I need to do so. – MobA11y Feb 05 '18 at 14:56