[Athen] Slightly OT: A concern for the future of Windows-based AT

[Deborah Armstrong]

I respectfully disagree. Screen readers still largely have a use case of a static web page. They don’t cope well when a page changes constantly. All geographic relationships between pieces of data are lost as it’s displayed in a flat representation – see this blog post for clarification:
                https://www.marcozehe.de/2017/09/29/rethinking-web-accessibility-on-windows/

They ignore some clickable elements. They tell the user that he’s focused on an edit box when he isn’t. Various browser and screen reader combinations give different results.
The very fact that there are three different modes of JAWS to access a web page, forms mode, virtual cursor and application mode and the idea that the user needs to understand the concepts of HTML (navigate to the third list to find your homework assignment!) makes the web more confusing for the screen reader user than working say with something simple like Wordpad.

Now take a magnification user. I was just helping someone last week with this completely accessible page:
                http://www.accessibleworld.org

and she didn’t see one of the columns at all. She was reading only half the page, because she didn’t know there was a column to the right. The screen reader user doesn’t know there are columns at all.

And if we’re talking about users with learning differences, consider how each web interface – online learning is a great example – is completely different. Do you go to tasks, preferences, settings, options or profile to set up for your online class?  With a busy page, where do you tell the speech to start reading? If you use a keyboard, is it alt-O, ctrl-O, shift-O, ctrl-alt-f then O  or is it Alt1, then O to open a file? I’ve seen different online apps that use these keystrokes, whereas a mouse user just clicks “Open”.

Back in the early 1990s when Alan Cooper wrote “The Inmates are running the asylum” we learned how the presence of modes and the absence of consistency in an interface made it problematic.

OK, so this has nothing to do with AT. But AT isn’t coping with it gracefully either; it’s giving access, but the ramp is pretty darn steep for a manual chair!


From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Dan Comden
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2018 10:53 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Slightly OT: A concern for the future of Windows-based AT

Hi Deborah,
Thanks for linking the article. The following is not directed at you. And your article is not Off Topic at all.

How about a different position -- AT has things handled. For the most part, screenreaders, TTS, STS, magnifiers -- they all understand basic underlying html.

So who is getting it wrong? The companies putting out shoddy interfaces and non-standard apps? Or the browsers? Assistive tech for the most part has it handled.

Discuss.

-*- Dan

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 1:46 PM, Deborah Armstrong <armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu<mailto:armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu>> wrote:
Bloomberg has an interesting story about Amy Hood, Microsoft’s CFO.

One business trend for this past decade is that a CFO is no longer a glorified accountant/budget analyst. They are now part of the senior management team – determiners of strategy rather than implementers. Microsoft’ Q4 earnings report came out Thursday and according to Bloomberg, investors are saying Ms. Hood is the best CFO Microsoft has ever had.

One thing she’s done is take money away from legacy divisions and put it in to the cloud. Since 2002 when she was hired her goal is to move Microsoft more towards cloud-based subscription models for their products – I’m paraphrasing Bloomberg here—previously most divisions could ask for what they wanted budget-wise and could expect to get it – that’s no longer true.  Bloomberg also comments that Ms. Hood timed her start date back in 2002 to get maximum access to the employee stock purchase plan.

So despite what we see at conferences with Microsoft’s waving of the accessibility banner, I don’t think it’s going to be smooth sailing ahead. If it doesn’t improve growth it’s going to be ignored.

The earnings reports no longer say anything about Windows, so we can assume it is gradually going to just be a framework for a browser; already most new apps are PWAS (progressive web apps) which means no installation, no data on your own PC, but you need to be online to access any of it.

This means that AT is going to need to get much better at dealing with progressive web apps and other online offerings. For keyboard users, there is no longer a consistent, reliable set of keystrokes for operating web-based applications. For screen reader users, just to take one example, pressing Tab can take you out of the application and in to the address bar which is very confusing; imagine if a single and frequently used keystroke could dump you out of the operating system! For magnification users, the lack of standards in a web-based interface means that you can miss important information because you weren’t looking in the right place.

The full Bloomberg story is here:
                https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-16/how-amy-hood-won-back-wall-street-and-helped-reboot-microsoft<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bloomberg.com_news_articles_2018-2D07-2D16_how-2Damy-2Dhood-2Dwon-2Dback-2Dwall-2Dstreet-2Dand-2Dhelped-2Dreboot-2Dmicrosoft&d=DwMFaQ&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=CcimSMQ4xO57bauN-QFhIWxzoCQCJz9__fybuJ6oxQE&s=wqlaq2O3tzSI4ZWKS_M2IOpRhyt1HJAQC3w8PzmD-4o&e=>

--Debee



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--
-*- Dan Comden                       danc at uw.edu<mailto:danc at washington.edu>
    Access Technology Center   www.uw.edu/itconnect/accessibility/atl/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.uw.edu_itconnect_accessibility_atl_&d=DwMFaQ&c=xoYdONxMEGxjdvKj5bOdEOV28uakaJ20R4TjadGGZBc&r=gcvya4Pqy0A2EsMRyTgo_3n3PIn53GqWAnSNzbIFuBs&m=CcimSMQ4xO57bauN-QFhIWxzoCQCJz9__fybuJ6oxQE&s=ACdqLB_jiUKN0bD2hQIeLaS3m_fSPqsQqk-Iu6t-g1o&e=>
    University of Washington      UW Information Technology

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