Accessibility of Newsletter pages
Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 2:49 pm
Thank you for your efforts to make the Ward and Stake Newsletter pages on http://www.lds.org usable and accessible for individuals who have disabilities. The efforts on these pages is noticeable, with skip links, regions, landmarks, and headings properly used. The effect is generally excellent accessibility.
I did notice some tiny areas that could use some refinement to make it easier for someone with disabilities to use the pages.
1. On the main Newsletters page, the Newsletter search field is not labeled. The purpose can be guessed, based on the associated button, but a label would be better. If the designers don’t want to use a visible lable, WAI-ARIA tags can be used to provide a label.
2. The search button is not labeled. The screen reader speaks the name of the button graphic “search-bttn.png”. This is better than nothing, but alternate text would be easy to add and make it much clearer.
3. The categories links on the left side bar menu, have a selected state, however the selection status if not indicated to the user. Thus, while a user can select any of the categories to filter the category, it is difficult for the screen reader user to tell what the current selected category is.
4. In the editor, there in an Alt+0 command for help, which is wonderful. However, the system jumps into Application mode, and there is no way (that I could find) to cause the help information (which is very helpful) to be spoken.
5. In IE9, there is a browse button spoken, but none is visible.
6. On the Image upload dialog, the Choose File button is spoken Browse. The button is not highlighted when it has focus.
7. The image upload dialog does not provide a way to provide alternative text for the image.
8. Images cannot be heard in the editor.
But this sounds like complaining, and it is not. These are highly accessible pages and the development team is to be commended! Thank you considering these minor issues. Please add the item 4 as high priority and the other items 1 through 8 as medium priorities in your defect list.
Thank you
Brian Cragun
(I used JAWS 13 + IE 9 / Firefox 17 for my testing)
I did notice some tiny areas that could use some refinement to make it easier for someone with disabilities to use the pages.
1. On the main Newsletters page, the Newsletter search field is not labeled. The purpose can be guessed, based on the associated button, but a label would be better. If the designers don’t want to use a visible lable, WAI-ARIA tags can be used to provide a label.
2. The search button is not labeled. The screen reader speaks the name of the button graphic “search-bttn.png”. This is better than nothing, but alternate text would be easy to add and make it much clearer.
3. The categories links on the left side bar menu, have a selected state, however the selection status if not indicated to the user. Thus, while a user can select any of the categories to filter the category, it is difficult for the screen reader user to tell what the current selected category is.
4. In the editor, there in an Alt+0 command for help, which is wonderful. However, the system jumps into Application mode, and there is no way (that I could find) to cause the help information (which is very helpful) to be spoken.
5. In IE9, there is a browse button spoken, but none is visible.
6. On the Image upload dialog, the Choose File button is spoken Browse. The button is not highlighted when it has focus.
7. The image upload dialog does not provide a way to provide alternative text for the image.
8. Images cannot be heard in the editor.
But this sounds like complaining, and it is not. These are highly accessible pages and the development team is to be commended! Thank you considering these minor issues. Please add the item 4 as high priority and the other items 1 through 8 as medium priorities in your defect list.
Thank you
Brian Cragun
(I used JAWS 13 + IE 9 / Firefox 17 for my testing)