[Athen] Hypothesis annotation tool accessibility with JAWS

[kerscher at montana.com]

Dear All,

 

I took the liberty of sending this post to people at  Hypothesis. I will be
setting up a session with their accessibility team   for testing their
accessibility, and Charles LaPierre from  Benetech will join me. We have
been talking to them for over a year under the Diagram project. This
functionality has great potential for published materials in EPUB 3. They
have made progress, but clearly it is not there yet. I'll post here as we
make progress. Below is what they asked me to post here.

 


>From Hypothesis accessibility team:


As you may already know, when reading a web page with JAWS, navigation
through the page happens in an invisible text layer using the Virtual Cursor
rather than on the document itself. If a user wants to copy and paste a
passage of text, they make the text selection in this invisible text layer.
Nothing is happening within the DOM here, and this is invisible to the
Hypothesis client. That is why selecting text with the Virtual Cursor the
annotate/highlight tools do not appear. Through some initial research and
consultation with a few of our Blind users, we've learned that JAWS uses
something called Forms Mode when direct interaction with the DOM is
necessary. Entering Forms mode does allow JAWS users to select text and the
annotate/highlight tools will appear. However, we've found that when
entering Forms mode and selecting text, JAWS does not read back the
selection to the user. This is fine for keyboard-only sighted users, but
obviously problematic for Blind users. We've reached out to Vispero, who
were unable to get JAWS to read text selection events out to the user (and
they declined to comment on whether they have plans to implement such an
affordance). 

 

Our developers are researching some workarounds, which we are summarizing in
this Github issue: Improve experience for creating annotations/highlights
with NVDA (and JAWS)
<https://github.com/hypothesis/product-backlog/issues/1148>  - as this is a
problem for NVDA as well. So far we've learned that not even Google has come
up with a satisfactory solution here for their commenting tool in Google
Docs.  Google's documentation
<https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6239410>  indicates that a comment
can only be added to one word. This would be a better experience for our
NVDA and JAWS users than the current one, but still not ideal (as sighted
users and blind users on VoiceOver are able to expand text selections to
entire passages, or narrow them to one character).

 

A few of our teachers have employed a workaround with Blind students using
NVDA and JAWS which may be useful. It involves three options, each with
benefits and drawbacks. None of these will be "one size fits all" and we
recommend working with students to find a solution they feel most
comfortable with. 

*	Option 1: Use VoiceOver to annotate (drawback: not available to
non-Mac users; also it's not always fair to ask a student to change their
workflow if they are used to another screenreader)
*	Option 2: Enter Forms/Focus mode to create annotations (drawback:
JAWS and NVDA do not provide verbal feedback while text selection is
happening, so the experience is confusing)
*	Option 3: Stay in Browse Mode / Virtual cursor to read. Create a
Page Note to discuss portions of the text (drawback: may result in a student
"outing" themselves to classmates when they don't want to)

Most of our students have chosen Option 1 or Option 3. 

 

For option 1, consult Apple's documentation for VoiceOver
<https://www.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/_1128.html#mchlp2741> .

 

For option 3: 

*	Use your screen reader to copy the passage of text you wish to
discuss, the same way you might copy text to paste into an email, Word
document, etc.
*	Navigate to the Hypothesis sidebar and select the Page Note button
*	In the text box, type the > character, a space, and then paste the
passage of text. Press Enter or Return twice
*	Now, dictate or type what you would like to say about this passage
and post your page note.
*	Your teacher and classmates will see the quoted passage styled as a
blockquote, with your commentary underneath.

The annotation will appear in the Page Notes tab and won't be linked to the
passage itself, but at least there will be context for the teacher and the
other students to go with the annotation.

 

Please note that we understand these workarounds are a stopgap rather than a
true solution. We are committed to creating an equitable, usable experience
for all of our teachers and students. If you or any of your students is
interested in providing feedback on how the annotation experience could be
better for Blind users, please send an email to katelyn at hypothes.is
<mailto:katelyn at hypothes.is> 

 

Best wishes,

Katelyn Lemay

Product Manager, Hypothesis

 

 

Best

George

 

 

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf
Of Clare O'Keeffe
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2020 1:52 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Hypothesis annotation tool accessibility with JAWS

 

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

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

 

 

 

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu
<mailto: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 <mailto: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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