1633919 - Please do not ask users to injure ourselves - safe mode is difficult for users with accessibility challenges

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement, P3)

Description

[MarjaE]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:75.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/75.0

Steps to reproduce:

I have reported several bugs.

Actual results:

Every time, someone asks me to check using ""safe" mode," or with a new profile.

Both of these disable important safety fixes.

""Safe" mode" disables add-ons. I'm not sure if it affects about:config fixes and user css, but I need both to stop blinking cursors, animated images, smooth scrolling, tab loading throbbers, and so on.

A new profile disables all accessibility fixes. bug 1579148

Occasionally bugs are closed because I or other users won't injure ourselves. I sometimes offer to injure myself, but not always...

Comment 1

[MarjaE]

As long as the documentation provides suitable warnings, I think it may help to ask users to either test with add-ons disabled, or test with a new profile, or provide about:support info and a description of any settings or preferences which may be related. Unless there are issues with about:support.

Comment 2

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

:asa, asking your team's thoughts on this. Should our 'ground' state for a new/safed Firefox be minimized motion, and ask the user to opt-into animations?

Comment 3

[MarjaE]

I don't have the necessary programming experience, but I think a minimum-motion AutoConfig might be a workable compromise when setting Firefox up, as long as it's easy to find on the download page. Not sure about completely changing default settings, or test settings. Not sure whether AutoConfig would work with test settings.

Comment 4

[Yura Zenevich [:yzen] (please use "needinfo")]

I moved it to Firefox::Preferences as it might be an interesting thing to consider for different modes/customization. Asa, what do you think?

Comment 5

[asare.w]

(In reply to Emma Humphries, Bugmaster ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/her) [:emceeaich] (UTC-8) needinfo? me from comment #2)

:asa, asking your team's thoughts on this. Should our 'ground' state for a new/safed Firefox be minimized motion, and ask the user to opt-into animations?

How can i help? :D

Comment 6

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Updating the Accessibility Team's impact assessment to conform with the new triage guidelines. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/Triage for descriptions of these whiteboard flags.