I'm posting a quick technology test to see if a new display method is working for our visually challenged users. The following test is a simple base menu with a basic set of graphical buttons that are navigable via keyboard. I'm looking for feedback on whether these 'show up' properly for users using screen readers before implementing this new method in the platform proper.
Download Screen Reader Test 4 (450KB)
Just download and run it. It has no external dependencies or anything else. Only the close button will do anything functionally. Please report back if this worked properly with your screen reader as well as which screen reader you use. If you don't use one but know someone who does, please recruit them to try it out!
Additionally, I am looking for confirmation that this works on different DPI settings in terms of display. If, after browsing the existing comments, you could post about any success or failure you have with non-standard DPI settings (not 96 DPI) on different versions of Windows as well as Wine, preferably with screenshots, that would be helpful as well. Please read through the comments first to ensure what you are posting about isn't already reported.
Thanks for your help in making the platform accessible.
Known Issues
- Pink corners will appear in the upper right and upper left when run on Windows 2000/XP. This will be fixed in final the same way we fix it in the current menu.
- The font size of the app list and folders does not increase as you alter the DPI settings in Windows. We'll either address this with the manual 'Large Fonts' setting in the platform or detect DPI settings in Windows and adjust the fonts proportionally.
- The app icons and folder icons do not scale as the menu scales up. We don't yet have a fix for this issue.
- Windows 2000 shows black backgrounds around the app icons, folder icons and close button. This is a limitation of Windows 2000's handling of images (doesn't support 32-bit alpha transparency) and will likely remain an issue.
Updates
UPDATE TEST 2: Added "Close" caption to the X button in the lower right that is compatible with screen readers.
UPDATE TEST 3: Added proportional resizing to the background image and a proper form caption of 'PortableApps.com Platform'.
UPDATE TEST 4: Added additional spacing to the close button to ensure Close doesn't show when in Large Fonts mode.
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I used MS Narrator that is built into windows. It worked fine. The pronunciation of Mozilla was not so clear, but navigating was accurate.
Gord Caswell confirms it works as expected on MS Narrator on Win7 x64.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I just tested it in JAWS 12.0 on Windows 7 x64 and it works as expected. I added in a hidden caption to the X button so that is read as well.
NVDA 2011.2 reads each entry twice, which is very odd as neither JAWS or MS Narrator (above post) did. I'm unsure if this is an NVDA bug or something with our custom component we can work around. If anyone with more experience can chime in, it would be helpful. It may be related to this reported issue as this also occurred under Windows 7 x64. I have not yet tested under other OSes.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi,
for a keyboard navigation test we need a list of aplications that is longer than the one shown at once in the platform window.
What i find strange and not a "MS Windows look and feel" -behaviour is that actions resulting from a keypress of arrowkey up, arrowkey right and tab seem to be equal.
I would expect key down / key up to result in scrolling listitems one by one.
Pressing tab in jumping through the order of the "controls".
And arrow key right / arrowkey left to change the "frames"?
Regards
Chris
P.S.: Maybe you should try to get some expert (user?) for screenreaders on board?
There are some forums on the web, i think.
The up and down arrow move between items just like the Windows start menu. When you hit the top or bottom and there is more scrollable, it'll scroll one slot with the focus staying on that first or last icon with each keypress, just like on Windows.
It should go right/left to get from say the app list to Documents, but it doesn't right now due to the way the component handles it. I may have a way to work around that, though.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John,
the scolling behaviour described by you is not what i see in the last beta.
It actually stops scrolling far away from the end of the list and will not go any further.
I cannot test it with the testversion downloadable in this thread because it lacks enough applistitems to scoll beyond list boundaries.
That makes it impossible to start e.g. an application on the very bottom of the list by just using the keyboard without touching the mouse.
I am not shure if starting an application by pressing works at all.
Chris
This is not the point of this thread. The current beta does not use any of these methods. You asked how it will scroll, I answered: "like Windows does", you use the arrow keys to move focus up or down and when on the last or first one, it will scroll more. Try Windows Vista or 7 (not in classic mode) and go to All Programs to see exactly what I mean. That is the way it will work. Discussion how it will work and other suggestions is beyond the scope of this thread.
This is a non-functional test of a method of handling keyboard navigation and being able to be accessible to screen readers. Let's try and stay on topic from here out.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi,
i did not understand that you were decribing the status it will work in the future rather than describing how it works now.
If that is the way you will implement it i am totally happy with it as it is exactly the way i would expect it to be.
Chris
hi,
I'm using NVDA version 2011.2 on Windows XP SP2 and all works great. Could you build such a testversion for real testing with the updater, the apps and so on?
Thanks
bernd Dorer
We'll be updating the platform to use this in either Pre-Release 4 or Pre-Release 5, so you'll get to test it out with the official platform release and all your regular apps.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I tested it with Jaws 9.0 and the recent stable version of NVDA and it is work correctly.
Best regards, Csabi
hmm, NVDA says nothing if I Downarrow or tab through the items. If I type something NVDA is able to read the programm name I typed. I tryed with NVDA 2011.2 and latest snapshot and Portableapps next 4.2. Is there a way to debug this?
best regards thanks.
tested it on windows7 64-bit with jaws 13.0.303 and it seems to work fine. can hardly wait for it to be implemented for real.
Tia,
Don Raikes