1717227 - Inline contact is inaccessible (semantically a table within a table, and add-contact icon link has no textual representation)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Disability Access, defect)

Description

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

Steps to reproduce

Open an email with a text/x-vcard attachment that contains a single contact. Make sure "Display attachments inline" is checked.

Note, once Bug 1667716 patch https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D118268 lands, an attachment with text/vcard content will also work. In which case you can create the email in Thunderbird (which exports text/vcard content).

Result

The shown email is structurally a <table> with a single row that contains another <table>. And this same structure is in the accessibility tree. It comes from https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/ea1278fae63adcd7fbc22407ff77a9851d38299f/mailnews/addrbook/modules/VCardUtils.jsm#332

Expected

A simpler structure that is also more accessible. If Bug 1717223 gets fixed, and we have multiple contacts, then we probably want to place the contacts in a <ul>.

Comment 1

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

Another usability issue in the inline display is the link to add the contact to your address book.

Currently, you have to click the contact icon that appears at the start. It is semantically a <a> link (https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/ea1278fae63adcd7fbc22407ff77a9851d38299f/mailnews/addrbook/modules/VCardUtils.jsm#336), but with no text label in the accessibility tree. Plus, the link icon has no focus styling (it is explicitly removed https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/ea1278fae63adcd7fbc22407ff77a9851d38299f/mail/themes/linux/mail/messageBody.css#150).

An "Add Contact" title attribute on the <a> link would be an easy fix. But this is currently not available to a visual, keyboard user. Plus, I think it is more useful/logical to have the option to add the contact appear later in the reading order, after the contact summary because it seems unlikely that anyone would decide to add a contact before they knew the details. Currently, this would require a backtrack.

I think even for visual users, clicking the icon to add to the address book is not intuitive. Personally, I was more visually directed to click the email address (but this just opens a new composition window).

A simple "Add Contact"/"Edit Contact" text button or link at the end, or underneath, would be clearest.