Ebu Access Cast 25 Transcript - a podcast by European Blind Union

Introduction

                                                           

(Intro jingle)

(Voice over)

This programme is financially supported by the fundings from the European Commission.

You are listening to the EBU Access Cast. The first official podcast from European Blind Union about assistive technology for blind and partially sighted people.

And here are the hosts.

 

(Tanja) Hello and welcome to the EBU Access Cast. This is episode 25. My name is Tanja Kleut. I hope you had a nice summer break and that you are doing well. We have the full crew with us, Mario Perčinić from Luxembourg, hi Mario.

 

(Mario) Yeah, we passed the 21. So we are now legal. Yeah. Hello, guys.

 

(Tanja) Yeah, hi. Paweł Masarczyk, this time from Austria.

 

(Pawel) Yeah, old Face, new place. Hello.

 

(Tanja) Hi, Bart Simons from Belgium.

 

(Bart) Hello everyone.

 

(Tanja) And Xavier Cisscar from Spain.

 

(Xavier) Hello. How are you?

 

(Tanja) I'm fine, thanks. Hope you're all doing great. What's new, guys. Do you have any recommendation for a new application or hardware that you bought during the summer or...

 

(Mario) Not really for the gadget stuff. I got some music equipment over the summer, but yeah, nothing, nothing techy for the moment. Still looking at the list of phones, though, so some things are popping up. But I didn't purchase anything yet, but yeah, I'll talk about it later.

 

(Xavier) We are waiting for your recommendations about phones. I want to learn about Android 11.

 

(Mario) Ok, yeah.

 

(Tanja) OK. From my side. Nothing really new in this aspect. So I propose to go to the accessibility news.

 

Accessibility in the news

 

(Voice over)

And now… Accessibility in the news.

 

EBU 2020 award on web accessibility best practices

 

(Tanja) The European Blind Union organises the award each year for good practises in accessibility. And this year was for web accessibility. The number of contributions was small. The applicants were interesting and they received a prize. So the number one is the Czech Union of the Blind, which had a very interesting application, not usual, I would say.

I don't know if you had the time to read and go through the summary and their application? So what they say is that they recommend 10 tips to ensure accessibility for public sector web accessibility. First is promotion of accessibility by giving presentations in all occasions. So raising awareness is the first point that they recommend. Then, starting with accessibility as soon as possible, because then the actual effect will have much more impact later in the website or in the product. Also, testing accessibility at the early stage for free and then providing full tests for a price. And then there are other recommendations. I don't know if it's necessary that I go through all of them. So they decided to take it differently, not just to follow the obligations from the Web Accessibility Directive, but to focus on those 10 points with the result that at the end they have a good collaboration with the company and they can continue to collaborate in the same way, having the good experience of users and also by providing better accessibility of their website.

The other 2 organisations that were awarded, are the Polish Association of the Blind and also the Italian Association of the Blind. I don't know, Pawel, if you know more about this Accessibility Plus project in Poland that they mention. They say that it is part of this project, implementation of the Web Accessibility Directive into national legislation in Poland, and also a project that tries to make websites of the public sector more accessible.

 

(Pawel) Yes. So basically the Accessibility Plus “Dostępność Plus” is a new bill that is in the power now. And it basically builds on this directive and it also obliges the public sector websites to be accessible. There are also some social implications in regards to accessibility of the built environment, etcetera. And there was a new task force built new corps of experts who deal specifically with these issues. And sometimes we see posts from them. And I can tell from what I have seen so far that, at least a couple of people there, I recognise the names and I can tell they're quite knowledgeable people and they know what they're talking about and they know the environment and they know the ins and outs of accessibility. And the good thing that is happening here, and I think the pandemic sort of propelled that, is that we are going more and more into digital e-government structures. So more and more things can be settled online and we have, for instance, a mobile app for managing not everything, but a lot already about, well, your administrative matters. So if you are a student and you have your student ID, it's in there. If you are driving a car and you have your driving licence, it's going to be there soon. And if you need to register your car, you can do that too.

 

(Mario) What if you're blind and you drive a car?

 

(Pawel) Oh, that's something I haven't tested yet. Maybe you will find a rare exception and then, you know, maybe we'll get a bounty for testing security.

(Everyone laughs)

 

(Xavier) Soon you will be able to drive a car, if you are blind, hahaha.

 

(Pawel) Hopefully. But something that is definitely interesting for all of us is the medical patient portal where you can actually check prescriptions. So if you go to a doctor and they give you a prescription for any kind of medicaments, you got any kind of medicine, you don't need these prescriptions on paper anymore. You rather get a digital prescription in the form of either a SMS text code that you show at the pharmacy and you get your medication or you have a QR code inside the app and you just show it again at the pharmacy and you get your medication. And you can read some details on the medication that was prescribed to you. You can keep track of all the prescriptions. So this is really convenient compared to how it was before. And things like that happen. I think also recently, this wasn't fully accessible, but at least worked and some kind of progress. And the Polish Postal Service introduced a service when you can receive a digital version of any administrative correspondence you might be receiving. So before you get your paper, your physical letter, you will also get a digital scan in PDF and you have to recognise it with OCR software, but nevertheless, you can read it on your own in any kind of form. So this is happening. I think there was a survey conducted by one of the NGOs that is a watch dog for accessibility in Poland and the public services have a slightly better rating than last year. There is still a long way to go. But I'm hopeful and I think a lot is happening and there are people who know how to take care of this.

 

(Tanja) That is great. And that also can inspire other organisations in other countries to follow the same or to see that that is possible, because maybe you see that there is much room of improvement left. But in some other countries we are still not there. So it's great to hear about this work and about these experiences.

So in the Italian application, they mentioned that, for example, they are collaborating with the Banking Association and they're working to make the online banking system more accessible. For example, they also mentioned that they're collaborating with the national media RAI to provide an accessible version of the content for people using screen readers or assistive technologies, which works well, I can say because I speak Italian, but I'm not sure if special versions of websites is the right way to go. Of course, we have to always go for inclusive websites that are the same for all users. And of course, accessibility will benefit also other users.

 

Online webinar on the Web Accessibility Directive

 

Next topic is the online discussion of the Web Accessibility Directive that is organised by the European Commission and European Disability Forum.

So the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology is inviting you to participate in the online discussion of the Web Accessibility Directive to speak about the achievements that have been done so far and also about the remaining challenges. Bart, you can share with us some more information?

 

(Bart) Maybe I can provide a little bit of background.

In 2016, after a long lobby, EBU, European Blind Union and other organisations finally managed to have some legislation on web accessibility in the European Union. This came in the form of a European directive, published in the official journal in 2016. And how it works with a European directive is that every member state needs to implement the legal text in their national legislation. So that takes time. And with every legislation, there is a period in which you can adapt your existing websites in this case by a certain deadline. Of course, you cannot publish a law that yesterday everything had to be accessible. So the deadline is September 2020. So if we manage to publish in time our episode of this podcast, it should be online just before the deadline because it is 23 of September this year. So that's what the European directive says. By that date, all public sector body websites in all European member states, also the old ones have to be accessible.

 

(Tanja) Yeah, I wanted to add, unfortunately, this does not apply on websites that are not maintained anymore.

 

(Bart) There are like in every legislation, there are exceptions. There are quite many exceptions. It's always a give and take when you make legislation. So there are some logic exceptions. There are a few which are not so logic. But also in the directive, it is said that after 3 years, so from now on, they have to evaluate all the exceptions. So there is somehow a mechanism to review what did work, what did not work in this period.

 

(Tanja) Ok. And you will also have a key note at this event.

 

(Bart) So on this date, on that famous deadline that we know since 2016 is coming up, they decided to organise this webinar. Everything is webinar nowadays. And since it's co-organised between the European Commission and the EDF, the European Disability Forum, they proposed me to do the introduction.  A key note on why is accessibility important and what difference does it make when it's not? And so, yeah, the programme is quite ambitious. They say that they want to hear achievements. Well, in theory, the achievement has to be that all the websites have been made accessible. Of course, we know that this is far from reality, but I think it has to be a positive day. Hopefully many people have woken up by now and will be working hard in the coming period to rectify the situation.

 

(Tanja) Ok, that's great.

 

(Xavier) My asking would be, or my proposal would be perhaps, not for the keynote, because the keynote, as I understand you are pointing, has to be a positive keynote. But an interesting work would be comparing different level of achievement inside the European Union. For example, the case of Polish situation that Pawel has been talking about with the Spanish situation that is in some cases will be better and in some others won't be. And then knowing why is different. Why is better in some aspects and why is worse in some others and trying to learn what has made it better and what and what has made it worse. So I know that there must be many conditions, many circumstances and many things that can condition these achievements. But we can learn many things from ourselves. And I would be very interested in actually knowing the situation in all the European countries because I have liked a lot hearing from Pawel. Is there any forum or any place where we can know from other countries in these situations? Because one other thing is knowing the ways we users have to ask for getting things better, because many times we find things that are not being implemented, but we cannot say anything. I mean, we find many websites that are not being made in the right way. But we ask them to make it in the right way and they don't listen to us. So where can we get this information actually?

 

(Bart) Many interesting items I could react on. But to keep it brief. You're absolutely right that the situation in different member states is not the same, although all member states had to implement in their national legislation the same text from the European directive, some may go further. Some may not take several exceptions, or, as Pawell explained, they may extend it to more than public sector body websites. That's perfectly possible. So there are certainly differences/ You could, if you like legal text, you can compare them because they are made public. How the different member states implemented this legislation.

 

(Mario) Keep in mind some of those are copy paste, but OK.

 

(Bart) Yeah, mostly it's copy paste.

 

(Tanja) This is the site of the commission where monitoring is published. Is that the one that you're mentioning?

 

(Bart) It's very hard to find. Yeah.

 

(Tanja) Because there is a site where they invite public sector, in the framework of monitoring, to leave the reports. But as we are now starting…

 

(Bart) We're not there yet. Now, what they had to communicate, the member states had to communicate to the European Commission the legal texts that they implemented to transpose, as they call it, the European directive into national legislation. And there is a database where you can find those legal texts and you can also find which organisation in every member state will do the monitoring. And that starts only now. The law is there, now starts the next phase. It's monitoring how many websites are indeed complying with the law.

 

(Mario) Oh, yeah. And then there will be a lot of failure. Absolutely. Yeah, that's for sure.

 

(Bart) And they have now, I think, 3 years time to do the reporting on that monitoring exercise. So what's important is that we have now legal texts. That's good. But of course, what is even more important is what reality does with it. Do people obey to the law or or don't know the law or decide to ignore it? So while there are differences in the legislation in every member state, I'm sure the differences on the floor are even much bigger.

There are countries with a long history in accessibility, like Spain, like the Scandinavian countries, I think. Who have already national legislation since long time, so we can assume that the situation is there better than country like mine, Belgium, we never had any national legislation. Only since this European directive is transposed, we have something in our national legislation.

 

(Mario) Yeah, but for example, you have the organisations such as yours in Belgium, which, you know, is taking care about the whole thing. There are countries where the whole thing relating to the web accessibility or let's say digital accessibility and whole perspective is really, you know, at the early beginnings. So we cannot expect that…

 

(Bart) That's also what I heard in Xavier's intervention. What can you do as a user, as a visitor of those websites if, although they are obliged to be accessible, if they are not. And there is no policeman strolling the Internet to find inaccessible websites and report them. The directive leaves this indeed to the users, to the visitors.

There is a, what the very euphemistically call, a feedback mechanism. We could say a complaint channel, but they call it very nicely feedback mechanism where you can address your accessibility.

So a little bit like the accessibility@Apple.com email address. So they have to give you a way to report any accessibility questions or if they say something is not accessible, you can request an alternative. They will need to publish those channels in their declaration of accessibility. And if you don't get any answer from that website, which can of course happen, there should be another level where you can go with your feedback or remarks or complaints, and this should be an independent, like an ombudsman organisation, and they should help you to register your problem and hopefully solve it. And for me, this will be a very important factor, because if you don't get any feedback or any response to your feedback, you will quickly be not motivated anymore to contact website owners. So that will be vital that this enforcement body that is really on the side of the users and really trying to to make your case, because otherwise, if we leave it fully to the individual users, they will quickly give up. And so for me, that's really important that this enforcement body that is really the ombudsman function, that should really be on our side, because if they are blocking everything or if they are not independent from government, they might not dare to stand up for the rights of the users. So for me, that will be a and that will, of course, be completely different in every member state as well. So the power of this body will be an ally for visitors to get…

 

(Xavier) My experience, as far as my experience teaches me, or has taught me or is continually teaching me, legislation is important, but it's not enough because what you really need is money and convincing people because of course, police is not going to go to the house of the web programmer or the web boss or the owner of the web. In Spain recently we've got this new coronavirus tracing app, as you may have in other European countries, and the app, because this directive affects also to mobile apps from public sector also, I think and… no?

 

(Mario) No, it doesn't.

 

(Xavier) It doesn't?

 

(Xavier) If the application is from the public sector has it to be accessible?

 

(Bart) For apps, the deadline will be June next year.

 

(Xavier) OK

 

(Bart) For websites the deadline is in a few weeks.

 

(Xavier) Well, in this case this app wouldn't have to be accessible. But in Spain, really, this app is not accessible because we can't check to accept the privacy policy. So we can't accept the policy and we can't use the app unless we ask a sighted assistance to check the policy for us.

 

(Bart) Crazy.

 

(Xavier) So this won't be presumably arranged in June. So the law is here and they could advance the accessibility and they could do it before June, I think.

 

(Bart) I'm not really agreeing with you when you say for accessibility we need money. I agree more with what we heard from the price winner, the Czech Republic. What we need, I think, much more is awareness.

 

"Xavier) Yeah yeah yeah

 

(Bart) We have always to fight this saying that accessibility is expensive, that it's difficult ...

 

(Xavier) No no no

 

(Bart) If you are a well trained developer…

 

(Xavier) The money is not for accessibility. The money is for making people aware of these things. I mean, for having an ombudsman, for having publicity, for having, I mean, the law alone, it's not enough.

 

(Bart) No now, I am fully with you.

 

(Tanja) I can also see that some new websites here by the public sector are not compliant, then they're failing basic recommendations on accessibility and it's really disappointing and we have to inform them. We have to intervene. And I think this is the best what we can do for the start. And then if we don't receive a reply that they will try to fix this, then maybe we can proceed with other means.

 

(Bart) Yeah.

 

(Tanja) OK, so you can still register to this event if you are listening us before the 23rd of September.

 

NVDA addon Zoom Accessibility Enhancements

 

(Tanja) And do you know, Bart, on which platform this will be hosted?

 

(Bart) It will be, uh, Go to Webinar.

 

(Tanja) Aha go to webinar, OK. Because I wanted to connect it with our next topic, which is Zoom and the addon for NVDA for zoom. But, well, it will not be useful for this webinar, but it will be for another one.

So this addon improves the accessibility of Zoom with NVDA and add some more shortcuts and announces more events and alerts. Do you have experience with this addon? I know, Pawel, that you are very experienced with Zoom.

 

(Pawel) Yeah, I haven't tested it yet, but what it basically does, it lets you control which events are spoken and which not. Because a lot of people found it annoying and they found themselves being overflodded with everything that Zoom says in meetings, especially with a lot of people joining, leaving, sending messages to the chat. And on one hand, you would like to focus on the speakers. On the other hand, you also would like to know what's going on, but maybe not everything at once. And especially if you're hosting the event, you'll get a lot more messages because Zoom needs to let you know what's going on so that you can react. The waiting room events, any request for any permissions or anything like that.

And this addon allows for switching that on and off per event basis. And then also what you can with this is when you're doing remote control on the computer. Basically, it works as long as the other party is also using the screen reader because then you can also have the sound broadcast. That's not the problem. But the problems start when you want to switch efficiently between your own computer and the other party's remote computer. Then some keyboard shortcuts may be blocked, may be overtaken by the remote machine and so on. So this addon allows you for switching between the 2 computers and that's what it does for now. I may make this suggestion to the developer, but I think what it could also do would be reading of subtitles. Because at the moment, the mobile versions of Zoom read them perfectly fine. If there is a subtitling provided for the webinar or meeting.

 

(Mario) You mean the captions?

 

(Pawel) Yeah. Yeah, the captions. Exactly. On the PC, it's sort of irregular. At some point it will announce the captions, at most points it won't.

And they are really useful, especially if you're not a native speaker of a language in which the meeting is and you would like to follow of course ...

 

(Mario) Ah, Pawel wants to join the Chinese meetings. Now we know.

(Everyone laughs)

 

(Pawel) If I ever wanted to, I mean, that would be a great help. But sometimes even with English, you have different accents. There are names of products given, and I really find myself exporting ...

 

(Xavier) In this case, you couldn't use this addon because this addon only works in English.

 

(Mario) Yeah, true.

(laughing)

(Xavier) I am sorry.

 

(Pawel) I think it's fairly easy to localise it and somebody would…

 

(Xavier) Ah really?

 

(Pawel) Yeah. And a lot of NVDA addons...

A bunch of python scripts with localisations but…

 

(Mario) It will probably come along with the future versions, the localisations.

 

(Pawel) Yeah. But I often find myself exporting the entire captions at the end of webinars so I can note down the names of some products or websites or names of people who gave their email addresses somewhere or anything like that. And of course for people with hearing disabilities, this is crucial. So if we have, I mean, obviously, deaf and blind people will not follow a transcript, uh, will not follow captions as they appear, most likely the transcript, but nevertheless, it could be a little bit of help. And if the mobile devices can do it and why not the PC? And now we have the addon and we can switch this on demand, it would be a very welcome enhancement.

 

(Mario) Yeah, I have to say that regarding the addon, I tested it as well. It does work and it's in my case, for example, it speaks some of the stuff which wasn't spoken earlier in Zoom. And as Pawel said, you as the user can define whether you wish to have all the announcements spoken. If you don't want nothing spoken or you want to have the announcement as beeps or you want to use the custom mode. And so in order to do that, you press NVDA shift and A key to toggle between the modes.

And then when you're in the custom mode, you can use a bunch of different shortcuts which are basically like control NVDA and then a bunch of number keys to, you know, read the certain announcements. And yeah, it does work and it's really good. It's a free addon. So whoever needs it. Yeah, go and download it.

 

Audiomixer

 

(Tanja) Ok, great, then what about if we would like to take some notes during a webinar or check maybe the emails at the same time or do whatever, there is a tool that can separate the audio in the headset, and it is from a Dutch company. Bart, you can tell us more about this?

 

(Bart) Yes, the name of the company is Babbage and it's a tiny tool that exactly does what you mention. What you can do in Windows is set the volume for each individual application, but you can not set the balance left, right in your stereo speakers. You cannot adjust the balance for individual applications.

And that's exactly what this little tool does: for all applications that produce audio on your computer, you can set the balance. So you could have your radio or your Skype call or your webinar set to zero percent balance, which means you would hear it only in your left ear of your stereo headset or speakers. And you could put your screen reader to 100, having it only in your right ear. And that's the whole ...

 

(Mario) purpose of the application, basically.

 

(Bart) Exactly.

 

(Tanja) Yes. Is it accessible?

 

(Bart) It works with JAWS and NVDA. What we found out is that it currently with the version we used for testing it did not work with Narrator nor with Supernova from Dolphin, which is strange because it looks like normal sliders. Like you would use in Windows. There seems nothing exceptional, but somehow JAWS and NVDA, which are only the tools which they also say they are supported, for some reason other screen readers didn't use it. With other screen readers it didn't work at the time of testing.

It is useful for me to have. You can concentrate a little bit better if the sound is coming from one side and the other sound is coming from another side, and they target it to people who are doing online or making phone calls all day and they have to follow a script on the screen. But it can also, as Tanja said, be useful for anybody using. We are using much more audio on the computer these months. So I'm a little bit surprised that this is not available in Windows, because it sounds so simple. Just provide next to the volume slider for each application, provide alos a balance slider. It's not there, so that's what they add and it's not very clear if they really launched this as a big project because as I saw, it was only in Dutch and it does not contain a lot of text. So it should be very easy to make it in other languages as well.

And it's a little bit hard to find on their website. And then, you require a key because it's not free software. And then you open the EXE file, you install it and it says, give me your licence. But there is nowhere a link where you can buy that licence key. So it has to be a bit more polished if they want to launch it to the bigger public, I think. And what set me off a little bit is the price. It is 149 Euro currently.

 

(Mario) Whaaaaaat?!

 

(Pawel) (hesitant) I would consider this if it had a couple more features. And I think what Windows also doesn't have and it could have, is the ability to route the audio from one app to another. Like on an actual mixer, which you can do sort of with virtual audio cable, which is also not free. I mean, it has a light version but there are some limitations, of course.

And so, for example, if I'm on a Skype call, I would like to play some music or present my screen reader talking, speaking something. I can do this. But the problem is that you also need to supply it with a sort of audio repeater so you can hear this yourself, because when you root this audio from one app to another, then your listeners can can hear it. The people you talk to on the other side can hear it, but you cannot anymore because it's not on your sound card anymore. And with the audio repeater, you bring it sort of back, but also you bring your own voice back. And it's a lot of technology, a lot of tinkering. And unless you're really determined to do this, this is not that easy. And I think on other platforms, I know that on Linux, this is a native feature in one of their audio drivers. I think the ALSA or somewhere And on a Mac there are apps that do it just fine.

I think Audio Hijack Pro,

 

(Xiver) Black Hole, also, I think.

 

(Pawel) So there are at least a couple solutions, but in Windows this is really, really tricky. And I think it would be great if there was a piece of software that would be maintained ...

 

(Xavier) Have you tried Reaper?

 

(Pawel) Not really

 

(Xavier) Because Reaper, that costs 60 euros I think, has a utility called rearouter or something like that, that does all kinds of rooting sound. For example, you could be recording this Zoom conference from Reaper to Zoom or from Zoom to Reaper. You can do all kinds of rootings, and it's a very, very, very nice and accessible, extremely accessible and accessibility is maintained by the whole community.

 

(Bart) But this is made for recording, if I'm not mistaken? This is not for life using your computer.

 

(Mario) Yeah, yeah. This is, I mean, I agree that the Reaper itself is is a great tool to use it. But, you know, this is a tool for sound engineers and for people who really do have a recording.

 

(Xavier) I was answering to Pawel's asking, not for words, but Reaper is much cheaper than what I think the price is, is very, very high of this audio mixer. I've heard some sound cards that included this this utility of managing every single application level and balance. But now I don't have this software.

 

(Mario) So there is, if you go deeper into the whole subject, there are basically DIY tools.

And so if you have some friend who is, you know, skilled enough with the soldering skills, it's possible to, you know, make your own kind of adaptor tools that you can solder and can do just that kind of thing. Because basically what this software does, it source audio splitter, basically, and it's possible to make this hardware source audio splitters for really very cheap.

And there are like tutorials how to do that for somebody who knows how to solder these things and you just plug that kind of adaptor into your PC, which you can get it for like 10 bucks, 20.

 

(Xavier) But you are speaking about hardware. Not software.

 

(Mario) Yeah, I'm talking about hardware stuff.

I understand why this tool was produced because any windows for the moment, which you only can do, but this is not you know, it's not solving the problem. You can reroute all the signal to mono. But that doesn't solve the problem.

So this audio source separation doesn't work, and I absolutely understand why they want to do this tool. And, as you said, for the call centres and people who are basically doing any kind of, let's say, even tech support or they're doing any kind of sales or whatever thing they do where they really require screen reader in one source and the phone on the other, so that the person who's on the other side of the line even doesn't have to be notified that you are using screen reader, et cetera, et cetera.

 

(Bart) That's exactly the use case, why they made it. And they even say somewhere that they were indeed fed up of making this hardware wiring thing, soldering what you say. So that's exactly the reason why they made this software.

 

(Mario) Sure. And I absolutely support the idea of having the tool. It is something that we as the blindness community, we need it. But come on, guys, this price is overkill. I mean, lower the price down to about like, I don't know, let's say 50 bucks, which is even a lot. But let's see, just by the example, instead of 150 euros, let's say that the software would be 50 euros per PC, which is still a lot. But OK.

 

(Bart) You will get 3 licences so you can use it on 3 computers and you can take the licence back.

 

(Mario) So you mean if OK. So if you pay, you get ...

 

(Bart) You can reactivate. You can deactivate on one machine and so you can have it run on 3 simultaneous computers and you don't lose keys if you sell your computer only maybe ...

 

(Xavier) So it's your price, Mario.

 

(Mario) (Laughing) So it is my price.

 

(Pawel) Organise group shopping for this.

But yeah, I also think that maybe maybe the reason why it's also hidden and mysterious and why it's so hard to find is maybe, I hope so, there will be some more options, like, for example, the ones I suggested coming up, and then it will be more global rollout, maybe.

 

(Xavier) Volume licencing or something like that.

 

(Mario) Yeah, well, but I mean, the overall idea is really cool, I see you know, the potential where it could be used, but, yeah, it's a bit pricey.

 

(Tanja) I agree.

 

(Bart) They will hear our feedback and they will maybe come back to us.

 

(Tanja) I hope so.

 

(Mario) Actually, it is the same guys who are making the addon for NVDA for Citrix, and they were I remember they were showing that in the Sightcity 2 years ago. So I'm not doubting their programming skills, but, yeah, you could, guys, a little bit restructure your marketing skills.

 

(Tanja) OK. Hoping that they will hear what we say. We can go to the next topic.

 

Facebook improves accessibility on the main site

 

(Tanja) Facebook accessibility has improved much, and you notice that, Mario? So usually as screen reader users, we often use the mobile Facebook, for those who are using Facebook, because the native interface was not very accessible until recently.

Now they completely changed the interface and do you want to tell us more?

 

(Mario) Yeah, basically. So what happened is that at the end of July, Facebook made the announcement on their Facebook accessibility page that they restructured completely or their native interface from their Facebook website. So right now, when you go on the Facebook with whatever browser you want to use, whether it's Firefox or Chrome or new Edge Cromium, you will get the same experience, but what's really happening is that right now everything is being spoken as it should be. So first of all, the scrolling of the feeds is really easy. The screen reader is not jumping, as it used to be. All the elements are being structured properly with the headings. So when you go, for example, from post to post, they are being shown as heading 3. If you want to read the comments, then they show up. You have to, of course, click on the comments button that they show up. So once they show up and you want to read just the comments they're shown as heading 5. We also have the ARIA labels so you can jump from section to section and all the things are also being spoken live. So in case you like your, I don't know, whatever reading some posts and somebody contacts you on the Messenger, you're getting immediate notification that you're being messaged. You are getting the message from who is the message and if you're not doing nothing else at a certain time I think that the content of the message is even being spoken. But then you can easily just open like the part of the Facebook, a messenger, and you can read the whole conversation and then respond back. And so everything works as it should be working from a long, long time ago. Because I for many reasons and kind of because of my private stuff, of the music that I'm doing, lots of time spending on the Facebook and also a lot of the accessibility related stuff is coming in from the various Facebook groups, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm spending quite a lot of time there. But yeah, if you're using it, you will notice now that the overall experience improved like 300 percent really. And we have a link about it in the show notes.

What I really like about that article is the structuring of the article.

Like the article goes really very, very deep into details from the, well, it's also from the developers point of view where they're saying really for each of the points which libraries they used, which part of the code they had to integrate in certain parts of the Facebook website in order to get the stuff being spoken. So, yeah, it's it's the whole interface is much more more responsive than it used to be. It's much more faster.

And I noticed that even with the mobile apps as well, like the mobile apps are also much faster than before.

 

So I would say that the whole, you know, accessibility integration caused the even better code optimisation for the whole interface, which is really good.

 

(Tanja) That is great, because also some of the options were not available in the mobile Facebook and we never could see some of the functionalities. Or maybe you wanted to share publication from someone and then you shared only the link by coincidence in the mobile Facebook, not the entire status from the person, but only the link. And then suddenly you discover, no, I shared only link, but I wanted to share everything. Because the mobile for some reason did not have all the functionality as the native interface.

 

(Mario) And then you also have the inconsistencies with the mobile interface that, for example, you would load the same mobile interface in two different browsers, and then, for example, the mobile interface in Firefox would be the old one, while, if you would launch it in Chrome, you would get the features that you would not even notice that there are there before because the Firefox was using the old interface.

So, yeah, with this new one, everything is accessible as it should be. And, you know, everyone can see them the same way. And that's great.

 

(Tanja) That is great. Did you notice also some changes for the groups?

 

(Mario) In terms of notifications, you're getting all the notifications which are also involving the groups. So if there are any updates in the groups where you're a member, you can see that it will tell you, like, for example, you have 5 new group updates. So then you click on them and then at the top, it's showing you the most recent groups that are being updated. And you can see which groups have new posts. So it will say, like name of the group has 3 new posts or whatever.

 

(Tanja) And I also read that they created new keyboard shortcuts that you can see if you type shift questionmark. So I tried this and I initially didn't work, but I had to use the keyboard pass through option in NVDA, which is insert F2 to enable NVDA to disable its shortcuts. And then it worked. And I could see the list of current available shortcuts in that page because apparently they're changing also on the page to page or what is shown to you in that moment.

And also they say you can use J to go to the next post. But again, you have to press the same shortcut to pass through. You can not just use J because it will do something else with our screen readers. But you have also headings and ARIA landmarks which you can use like the navigation for the menu on the top. The main area is for the posts and then "create post" is in a separate region. So it is well structured really

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