1629981 - [meta] Make Thunderbird's calendar as accessible for screen readers as the rest of the product

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Calendar Frontend, enhancement)

Description

[Ali Savas]

I recently read that Mozilla plans to integrate the calendar more into Thunderbird than before.

At the moment the calendar of Thunderbird is not accessible for users of screen readers. This means that one of the core features of Thunderbird cannot be used by blind people.

In order to allow screen reader users to manage their appointments in Thunderbird, the entire calendar should be made completely accessible. This allows blind and visually impaired people to use alternative calendars without being bound to specific calendars.

As the calendar is now more integrated into Thunderbird, it is time to adapt the calendar for accessibility as well.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The goal is very worthy and would be great PR for 78 (beyond the obvious user benefit) if we get traction, i.e. volunteers+staff, both of which historically are thin.

We tend to have discrete bugs - like https://mzl.la/3elL7Ds - for each area in need of patching. Let's see how Geoff would like to have it organized.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Correct, need to have actionable issues of what's currently wrong, as separate bugs.

Comment 3

[Ali Savas]

It's sad that I have to say it like this, but it's simply impossible to list individually what's not accessible because the Thunderbird calendar is almost inaccessible. Here, basic accessibility must be established so that individual bugs can be reported.

It is important that all controls of the calendar are made accessible and all areas of the calendar are made accessible with the Keyboard.

Comment 4

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I think we, as TB developers, we have an advantage in knowing how to divide and conquer this meta bug, and we can collaborate with Ali in this situation.
I think we should define a plan of action and separate the work in small sections to go through a sort of initial "accessibility improvement" overview of the Calendar.

I'd say we could start by dividing the work in sections such as:

• Mini month
• Tree list of calendars
• Keyboard navigation of the main Calendar view
• Keyboard navigation of current events
• Main focus ring

After this initial round of fixes, we can start asking users to be more specific and file dedicated bug reports.

Thoughts?

Comment 5

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #4)

I'd say we could start by dividing the work in sections such as:

• Mini month
• Tree list of calendars
• Keyboard navigation of the main Calendar view
• Keyboard navigation of current events
• Main focus ring

Yes, I've spent a little time trying to establish what works and what doesn't. The first things to do in my opinion is annotating events on the main view so that screen readers can interpret them – they're already part of the tab navigation cycle. Then keyboard navigation of the main view.

The calendar list is a bit of a mess, especially that most of the things you can do with it are only available with the context menu or double-click. I've seen mock-ups to improve this, let's start implementing them.

Let's use this bug a meta bug for calendar accessibility work in 78. I am pretty swamped with other work so I haven't got much time for implementation, but I'll do reviews where necessary.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Sounds like a sound action plan.

Comment 7

[Ali Savas]

Is there any news about this? I don't currently use the Thunderbird calendar, so I can't say what the current status is.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Some work has already been done, and parcelled out, correct?

Comment 9

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Yes, some initial widgets of the calendar like the minimonth and calendar list have been converted to accessible HTML.
We still need to do the big chunk of work which is rebuilding the month view to use an accessible HTML table. We will try to make it happen for 115, but there are no guarantees for now.