Screen reader challenges on bioconductor.org site

[seandavi]

From the support site:

Hi! Thanks for all the work on an organized and useful website. I've found biocViews like this one https://bioconductor.org/packages/release/BiocViews.html#___ExperimentData produce tables that are inaccessible with a screen reader. I've tested on Mac with Safari and Chrome. The screen reader sees that there is a table and it produces a description of the number of rows and columns but it cannot read the contents.

[HenrikBengtsson]

Is there a way to "reproduce" these finding programmatically? Are the tools and validators that pick up this particular problem?

[seandavi]

Good question. There are some tools for general 508-compliance, but my sense is that screen reader testing is still done somewhat manually.

Because parts of the website are rendered dynamically (ie., the site does not have content when using something like curl or other headless tools), there are additional challenges to automated testing.

Finally, I'm not clear that it is possible to build a feature-complete version of the website locally for testing purposes. That might be a question for TAB at some point.

[LiNk-NY]

I took a stab at this in PR #305. Your feeback is welcome.
FWIW, I was not able to test these changes in the provided
container as these tables are rendered dynamically.

[LizHareDogs]

Hi! Thanks @seandavi for making this an issue-- I've been meaning to do it for a couple of weeks and here it's already done! I'm the screen reader user who finds the tables to be empty. So thanks to everyone contributing to this discussion.

There are automated accessibility checkers but they vary in their effectiveness. Does anyone have advice about what particular web software we're looking to test?
Thanks again everyone.

[lshep]

I'll monitor to make sure the next autobuild of the website works correctly and gets pushed forward; after which we will need to test

[seandavi]

@lshep could we leave this open until we have @LizHareDogs confirm what works and what doesn't? When should she check the site?

[lshep]

sure. marcel had added the issue to the PR so it auto closed

[lshep]

the site should have regenerated and propagated so should be good to test

[LiNk-NY]

The changes seem to work based on my cursory testing with orca on Ubuntu. It reads the cell contents when I click into the cell. Your feedback is appreciated, @LizHareDogs. Thanks!

[LizHareDogs]

Thanks so much everyone for your work on this! I'm sorry to say that it's not working for me on Mac with either Safari or Chrome. How are you "clicking into" cells? screen reader users don't use mouse clicks, since we can't see where the table is on the screen. When I go through the items on the page with the keyboard and interact with the table, I get an "empty table" in Chrome and "in table: no selection in Safari.

On Feb 19, 2025, at 3:18 PM, Marcel Ramos Pérez ***@***.***> wrote: LiNk-NY left a comment (Bioconductor/bioconductor.org#304) My cursory testing of the changes are passing. It reads the cell contents when I click into the cell. Your feedback is appreciated, @LizHareDogs. Thanks! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you were mentioned. <https://github.com/LizHareDogs> <#304 (comment)> <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AMVDYUGGV3G3HQBFP4NG34L2QTRKNAVCNFSM6AAAAABW6P7DDKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDMNRZGY3TAMRWGA> LiNk-NY left a comment (Bioconductor/bioconductor.org#304) <#304 (comment)> My cursory testing of the changes are passing. It reads the cell contents when I click into the cell. Your feedback is appreciated, @LizHareDogs <https://github.com/LizHareDogs>. Thanks! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#304 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AMVDYUGGV3G3HQBFP4NG34L2QTRKNAVCNFSM6AAAAABW6P7DDKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDMNRZGY3TAMRWGA>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

Liz Hare ***@***.*** Quantitative Geneticist, Dog Genetics LLC Assistant Director, Data Management and Open Science, ManyDogs Project <https://manydogsproject.github.io/> Co-Lead, Accessibility Working Group, The Turing Way <https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/index.html>

[LizHareDogs]

Hi, I'm still having problems accessing these tables. I'm wondering if the changes are not made to the website yet?

Thanks!

[lshep]

@LizHareDogs they have been pushed and propagated to the website so there must still be an issue somewhere.