[Athen] Hypothesis annotation tool accessibility with JAWS

Clare O'Keeffe okeeffe1 at stanford.edu
Fri Nov 13 12:52:01 PST 2020


Hi Carrie,

I have been testing Hypothesis with JAWS this week actually. I had the same roadblock and just today was documenting steps required to get it to work. The Annotate and Highlight tools do not appear because the text selection with JAWS occurs in the virtual buffer, not on the true page itself, so the page is unaware of your selection. You need to use a combination of Caret Browsing, the JAWS cursor, and passing through keys. Here are the steps I've come up with (this was within Canvas integration):


1. Once the Hypothesis page (module or assignment) that you want is loaded within Canvas, turn on Caret Browsing (F7)
2. Navigate to the text you want to select for annotation or highlight as usual with the virtual cursor
3. Determine the number of characters you want to select from start to finish.
4. Return the virtual cursor to the start location for your selection
5. Route JAWS cursor to PC cursor (INSERT + NUM PAD MINUS)
6. Simulate left click at that location with FOREWARD SLASH
7. Use SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW to highlight the number of characters that you previously determined you need to select (there will be no audible feedback, hence the need to pre-determine the number of characters, but you could copy and paste this selection to another document, such as Notepad, to confirm you correctly selected the text you wanted).
8. Use pass through modifier INSERT + NUM ROW 3 then A (to trigger annotation button) or H (to trigger highlight button). If you trigger an annotation, then focus moves to the sidebar automatically. If you trigger a highlight, then focus does not move to the sidebar and you will have to navigate there separately. Switch back to Virtual PC Cursor. To get to the Hypothesis sidebar quickly use CTRL + INSERT + B to bring up the list of buttons and go to the "Annotation sidebar button" and toggle it to expand the sidebar.

I hope this helps. It appears Hypothesis is aware of text selection being difficult in JAWS and NVDA. I was pointed to this backlog item of theirs when I reached out to them asking for help. https://github.com/hypothesis/product-backlog/issues/1148. I was going to come up with the steps in NVDA as well, but haven't gotten to that yet.

Thanks,

Clare O'Keeffe
Stanford<http://www.stanford.edu/> | University IT <http://uit.stanford.edu/>
Digital Accessibility Consulting Engineer, SOAP
okeeffe1 at stanford.edu<mailto:okeeffe1 at stanford.edu>



From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Million, Carrie
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 7:19 PM
To: athen-list at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Athen] Hypothesis annotation tool accessibility with JAWS

Hi all,

I'm interested in whether any campuses have used the Hypothes.is annotation tool with JAWS. I'm having difficulty getting the annotation/highlight tool to activate when I select text using the keyboard in JAWS. When I select the text with my mouse, the tools do appear. It's almost as if the Hypothesis website isn't recognizing the JAWS text selection.

Thanks,
Carrie Million
Assistive Tech
Diablo Valley College
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