Topic: Can't Send Cards into Battle Using a Screen Reader
I'm a visually impaired player, and depend on screen reader software to use the computer. I really wish the website would get more accessibility improvements. I have always had a hard time to select my cards to send into battles, because the cards selection screen isn't friendly to screen readers and keyboard interactions. Until January of this year, I was able to select cards, though I had a lot of trouble with the interface as well. I was away for a few months for real life reasons, and when I came back, I found that I can't even select cards anymore. I'm not sure what has changed....
What happens now is that the screen reader reports the cards as being button objects, but I can't navigate through the cards from the keyboard using "Tab" or "Shift" + "Tab" (focus doesn't stop on the cards), and can't activate them using the "Enter" or the "Spacebar" keys like with normal button objects. I also tried the screen reader's command to show a list of button objects on the page and simulate a button press from there, but even them the cards don't activate. The result is that the countdown runs out while I'm unable to select any card, and I end up kicked out of the battle...
I only have the Orca screen reader for Linux and can't test whether the same also happens with other screen readers.
Reply to Can't Send Cards into Battle Using a Screen Reader
Hi Aiyumi, I also use a screen reader. I use VoiceOver on iPhone and Jaws for windows. It works OK with these, although a little clunky at times. We can chat more about this if you text me on Discord.
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Reply to Can't Send Cards into Battle Using a Screen Reader
Hi, @nextgen622,
At the time I had Windows, I didn't have Jaws - I used NVDA. But I don't have Windows anymore, and can't test NVDA with the site.
A few months back when I was somewhat able to play Steem Monsters, it was very clunky here on Linux too. I had to use a keyboard shortcut to have a review cursor focus on the card's name and then use another keyboard shortcut to simulate a mouse click on the card. This didn't always work, but when it did, I could play the matches. Now I don't seem to be able to make this method work anymore.
I hadn't considered trying it on the phone (my phone is Android). I'm guessing that locating and tapping on the cards on mobile might be easier since we have to navigate the screen with our fingers, and don't need to depend on whether the element is programmed to be focusable with shortcuts. As long as the screen reader can read the card's name, we can probably tap on it. I'd prefer to play the game normally on PC, though.
PS: you're the one who pointed out the accessibility problems the SM team has fixed, right? What problems were these?
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Hi Aiyumi, unfortunately I'm not familiar with Linux. But I do have NVDA and it works with that. On Linux, are you able to navigate a webpage by buttons via a shortcut key? If so, selecting a card for battle should just be navigating to the card button and pressing Enter. Not sure why you're not able to activate the button by pressing Enter. I know sometimes I have needed to press Enter twice. I actually suggested this change to Matt, as I found the image based cards much more difficult to select in the past, as navigating through images was a lot more time-consuming and I would often get timed out.
In terms of the accessibility improvements, since the update of the card market a couple of months ago, there was no way of selecting a card on the Card page of Steem Monsters as the check box wasn't detectable with a screen reader. @yabapmatt fixed that with this release. Also, with one of the recent updates, it made the button to Open and Transfer packs undetectable with a screen reader. But now this has been fixed.
If you have any suggestions, happy to chat more about it.
My screen reader properly activates buttons with "Enter" when they're standard "button" HTML elements, but it doesn't have much luck with the "custom nonstandard objects + onclick" stuff. From what I remember, NVDA seemed to fare a bit better at detecting and dealing with these "clickable" objects.
More ideas. I think NVDA activates clickable objects (custom elements with the "onclick" attribute) with Enter even if the object isn't programmed to respond to the Enter key. This may be the reason pressing Enter works for you but not for me (I don't know about Jaws, but maybe it also does that). From what I noticed, Orca (the screen reader for Linux) doesn't seem to activate clickable objects with Enter, just with the keyboard shortcut that simulates a mouse click.
I did a little test. I went to my cards collection page and used Firefox's HTML inspector to make some temporary changes and play around with the page's HTML. I added 'tabindex="0"' to one of the card "buttons," and this made it possible to focus on the card using the keyboard, but Enter still didn't activate it. This makes me think that the "pressing Enter to activate cards" suggestion actually isn't implemented yet, but it works for you because your screen reader "clicks" with Enter :P .
O that’s interesting. I’m not sure about exactly how it works. If you got any suggestions on how it could be made to work with your screen reader, @yabapmatt might be able to do something about it if it’s not too difficult. Best thing would be to discuss this in Discord.
Nearly one year ago, I wrote a post talking about these clickable object problems and how to fix them. The problem should actually be very easy to fix. It should be a matter of adding 'tabindex="0"' to the cards so that "Tab" and "Shift" + "Tab" can focus on them, and adding some Javascript so that the fake buttons respond to "Enter" (keycode 13) and the spacebar (keycode 32) like normal buttons do.
OK, I will forward your suggestion to @yabapmatt. Btw, good to meet another vision impaired Steemian and Steem Monsters player. :)
Thank you!
Same here :D .
Reply to Can't Send Cards into Battle Using a Screen Reader
To anyone following this topic: my conversation with @nextgen622 continued in the comments outside the topic. It seems that if we use another STEEM frontend (Busy, Steempeak etc.) and reply directly to each other instead of the comment that started the topic, the forum doesn't show our replies.
We discussed peculiarities of our screen readers, and ideas to fix the accessibility problem in question. Below is the link:
https://steempeak.com/@nextgen622/re-aiyumi-tokenbb-reply-can-t-send-cards-into-battle-usi-1560820520555-20190618t031735169z
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