Mastodawn

Ralf Koller Feb 28

I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.

These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.

This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.

What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.

James Scholes Feb 27

If you're wondering what sort of #accessibility issues I mean when I say "papercuts," here are some examples:

First-letter navigation not working in commonly used parts of the Windows 11 UI, like "open with" dialogs and the system tray.

NVDA's browse mode suddenly becoming inactive and inoperable when transitioning between webpages.

Multi-line textareas being reported as "blank" in Chrome and Chromium-based apps.

Focus moving to the message list instead of the next or previous email when deleting content in Thunderbird.

These are things that can and should be fixed. But if or when they are, it'll be easy to write up another list of small, non-blocking issues that but nevertheless contribute to a frustrating, unproductive experience.

Pitermach Feb 27

@jscholes Yeah, totally all this. Thanks for reminding me I need to try explorer patcher on my win 11 box to get first letter navigation back in the system tray.

As an aside I keep seeing people say Windows is more efficient to navigate than MacOS because of not requiring interaction and having more keyboard shortcuts. Which I think is true... In older Windows apps, back when MS and other developers cared about this more. Having a menu bar with shortcuts which gave apps a good hierarchy, and having working first letter nav does a lot. But then you have all the modern apps, where you have none of this. So your only option is to tab, maybe 10, 20 times to find the thing you need. Good example of this is the Windows 11 settings app which also has collapsable section buttons that you have to expand for added keystrokes. Because VoiceOver was designed for an OS that really sucked at keyboard navigation, it has tools to deal with shit like this. Windows screen readers are way nmore passive about navigation because Windows was historically way better at this, maybe with the exception of Narrator which borrows a lot from VOiceOver. I'd kill for a screen search or a browser style nav mode for NVDA that worked everywhere and not just on the web.

Oh and this is not to say modern MacOS doesn't have its own papercuts. Any app built with catalyst feels super janky with focus management and text fields sometimes read very weird. Not to mention all the other little VO things.

@pitermach @jscholes Enhanced Object navigation helps a bit with this provided you know the first letter of the object you're looking for but basically yes, Windows has messed up a lot of things that used to give it an edge over Mac OS productivity-wise.

Pratik Patel Feb 27

@pitermach @jscholes Even though this shouldn't be on an add-on to solve, the ObjPad add-on helps quite a bit.

Simon Jaeger Feb 27

@jscholes The problem is that no matter how small the issues are, they still take the same level of effort to report. A thousand tiny paper cuts require a thousand times the time and energy as one giant blocker. It's just constant, never-ending irritation with no energy to do anything about it.

Nikola Jović Feb 28

@jscholes Yep, that. First letter navigation is the particularly annoying one for me, it's like Microsoft for some reason forgot that was ever a thing. Whenever I hear that a part of Windows 11 is going to be redesigned I immediately go, oh great, now time to figure out which accessibility bugs we'll have to deal with and which conventions that worked for years no longer will.

kellylford Feb 28

@NikJov @jscholes This is such a loss of functionality and annoyance throughout Windows. I've had this conversation with developers and program managers so many times and every time an app switches to a new framework we have to start over.

Jamie Teh Feb 28

@jscholes Not at all to detract from your point because I totally agree, but I (and the rest of the Firefox accessibility team) are at least trying our best to not allow Firefox to be a part of that trend. To that end, are you seeing the browse mode transition bug you mentioned with Firefox? I haven't seen it or heard of it, which is why I'm asking. I can't help with Thunderbird unfortunately; very different part of the organisation where I have no involvement or influence.

Marco Zehe Feb 28

@jcsteh @jscholes The main difference is that you yourself use Firefox daily with NVDA, and if you introduce a major bug that tests don't catch yet, you'll notice it quickly yourself. When I look at chromium and the bug it introduces and sometimes keeps around for months or even years, it becomes apparent that there are no serious screen reader users on those teams to be annoyed by the bugs. Like all the hideous text bugs Chromium has on the various platforms. And no, even at its worse days, Firefox text bugs were never so annoying. ;-)

Jamie Teh Feb 28

@marco I'm fairly sure there are at least two screen reader users on the Chrome accessibility team. I am particularly intolerant of accessibility defects and papercuts, though. Even the most trivial of papercuts can add up to hours of time wasted a week or hideous levels of extra stress and cognitive load. @jscholes

Marco Zehe Feb 28

@jcsteh @jscholes I agree. And I am grateful that you usually fix the Mac bugs I file fairly quickly, too. ;-) Firefox is by far the most stable browser on Mac nowadays, what accessibility is concerned. Apple have had some huge problems in Safari on the Mac lately, not so bad on iPhone, but Firefox has been mostly very stable. And I only use an un-googled version of Chromium if I absolutely have to, because their accessibility bugs are just hideously annoying. Same goes for Electron apps.

Jamie Teh Feb 28

@marco I'm genuinely glad it's working well for you. Of course, we still have our fair share of bugs, far more than I'd like, but we'll keep trying to squash the egregious ones at least. @jscholes

James Scholes Feb 28

@jcsteh No, I haven't had it happen with Firefox. But I don't currently use Firefox frequently enough for that to represent very useful data.

Still, good to know you haven't heard of it happening there.

Jamie Teh Feb 28

@jscholes Fair enough.

@jscholes I reported that Thunderbird issue a few days ago, I was a bit concerned it was just me. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2019407

2019407 - Accessibility regression: when deleting an email with the delete key from a folder, NVDA does not speak the email which gains focus.

UNCONFIRMED (nobody) in Thunderbird - Folder and Message Lists. Last updated 2026-02-28.

Stephanie Appleby Feb 27

@jscholes It's obvious that things are going backwards instead of forwards!

@jscholes Its only going to go downhil, Because their is no one to speek up. Most of the people just live with this shit. And even if people do speek, who the fuck cares? sea what'sapp for example.

@jscholes Especially Thunderbird, wow!

Kara Goldfinch Feb 27

@jscholes Well said.

André Polykanine Feb 27

@jscholes Exactly, and the "go linux now!!" and "ditch GAFAM!!" hysteria contributes to it wildly, as most open-source solutions are a huge #Accessibility disaster.

Devin Prater :blind:Feb 27

@jscholes @menelion This is probably one of the reasons I've seen many young blind adults not even want to touch a computer, and do everything from their phones. Because if worst comes to worst, they can use VO screen recognition, or tap around, or sighted help, and sighted people *know* phones. It's really sad, because now they are locked in. They don't *want* to make new or different tech because their phones, iPhones, obviously don't allow app creation on the phone, and then running that app and such. It could be better on Android with Termux, but blind people are comfortably numb to Android, because it's different and open, and what if they break something or what if it's not accessible enough for them, all that. So Apple it is. I hope they know just how much blind society relies on them.

André Polykanine Feb 27

@pixelate @jscholes To be honest, I still don't understand this. I hate touch screens with passion and tend to avoid them whenever possible.

James Scholes Feb 27

@menelion I can kind of see it. Tools like screen recognition on iOS and VOCR on the Mac, and being able to explore things that might not be in the focus order, can be powerful tools.

That said: I still find that iOS and Android do a relatively poor job of handing control over to the user to find/operate things that are inaccessible. Object nav in NVDA and browser developer tools are more powerful than screen recognition or touch exploration, but understandably perceived as harder to use. @pixelate

Stefan Welebny Feb 27

@jscholes These flaws are hard to fix by DIY in graphical user interfaces, but in terminal based computing it is more easy. That is why I believe that the terminal is an underrated platform for blinds, also offering a much better base for predictable interaction in general.

Rosalyn Anne Feb 27

@pixelate @jscholes @menelion I'm primarily a mobile user these days. I only boot up my laptop if I have to. And it's because, I feel like touch allows me to navigate more efficiently. My only gripe with mobile is that there are still some minor cases where I have to boot up my PC to do something. But I feel like it's a 90/10 split. At least in terms of my personal computing tasks.

André Polykanine Feb 27

@Rosalyn @pixelate @jscholes My tasks involves typing most of the time, and typing on the touch screen is a huge pain for me.

Rosalyn Anne Feb 27

@menelion @pixelate @jscholes I use a mix of braille screen input and an AI keyboard that costs $10 a month. But there's always Apple dictation. I have a mini keyboard and a tri-fold bluetooth keyboard. And I honestly use both very little these days.

André Polykanine Feb 27

@Rosalyn @pixelate @jscholes I don't know about your experience, but I can't achieve even 20% of that speed that I can get on a proper QWERTY keyboard. And when I'm slow, I'm angry and tired immediately.

Rosalyn Anne Feb 27

@menelion @pixelate @jscholes I'm pretty fast with BSI. If I weren't, I'd use bluetooth keyboards more. That's what I used to do.

Rosalyn Anne Feb 27

@menelion @pixelate @jscholes Have you tried dictation? I realize it won't work in all instances. I like the AI keyboard I use because it's more accurate than Apple dictation. I don't need to dictate punctuation or formatting. It takes care of that for me.

André Polykanine Feb 27

@Rosalyn @pixelate @jscholes Yes, I tried, but I don't trust it. Also, it's still slower than typing. I'm really fast, like professionally fast on the QWERTY keyboard, I'm basically a trained typist (I had such a chance at school). Plus, I do need multiple languages at once and I need to write code. I don't think restricted phone environment will satisfy my needs.

James Scholes Feb 27

@menelion Which is fine. Plenty of people with no additional accessibility needs can't operate entirely from a phone either.

There is absolutely no way I could perform the bulk of my work from an iPhone or iPad. Some of the reasons behind that are problems that should be fixed, and some are not. @Rosalyn @pixelate

Rosalyn Anne Feb 27

@menelion @pixelate @jscholes I gotcha. I was personally trained as a typist in school. So I'm pretty fast myself. But I'm not a coder. If I were coding, I'd definitely use a keyboard.

Boogiechild😊Feb 28

@Rosalyn @menelion @pixelate @jscholes I'm a fast typist as well.

Harmony Seeker Feb 28

@boogiechild @Rosalyn @menelion @pixelate @jscholes I can braille much quicker, but can also type fast

@ZBennoui @jscholes I'm with you on this 100%. Problem is that combined with the false sense of software scarcity (as I boosted a post on this yesterday) and AI coding means the quality will not go up, but go down. Sure, coders can imagine and build out a million things, but attention to detail will be lacking, and it's possible that newer frameworks just don't implement accessibility APIs well or at all because an AI forgot. That pain and bottleneck will be real, and relying on AI alone to get things done is great that it exists but never gets you a consistent metric for measuring because it will go through the flow differently each time. All this to say, I don't see an easy way out of what we've dug ourselves into, well, the industry has.

Stefen Hudson Feb 27

@jscholes And then when things finally get to a decent state after years of advocacy, they're dropped in favor of something with even worse accessibility and the cycle begins again. It's like people never learn because they're so focused on chasing the newest shiny thing.

Jeffrey D. Stark Feb 27

@kaveinthran @jscholes agree with you and your perspective and worry about the same

Zach Bennoui Feb 27

@jscholes Yeah I worry about this as well, especially with the rapid proliferation of AI vibecoding. It's already affecting me, I don't tend to try new software as much anymore because I automatically expect that it won't be accessible, and then I'm surprised when I turn out to be wrong.

Drew Mochak Feb 28

@jscholes We have a "just in time" supply chain model for software development.