1777184 - Status bar yields too much information, e.g. spaces toolbar button (NVDA screen reader accessibility)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, defect)

Description

[sm.everiss]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0

Steps to reproduce:

tabbing round with nvda and status bar on

Actual results:

I get status bar then hide or show spaces toolbar

Expected results:

Well I really don't even need this info at all, spaces wasn't in 91.9.1 and I really don't want it. I realise its usefull to see the spaces bar but I don't need it, and its just clutter
In addition if I hide the bar and click to show it doesn't return but as I say there is a lot of info about spaces bar to open or close it and while its usefull I really don't need that thing appearing, its an extra tab and right now the only way to stop most of that is to turn off status bar.
Related to this, is another issue but I am unsure if I should post it as its own.
Basically thunderbird progress when checking mail, etc is not happening or at least thats stats has changed so nvda doesn't read it.
Of course I am unsure if this has to do with turning off of the status bar.
What I really would like would be a way to have some sort of theme which makes thunderbird look and behave exactly like 91.9.1 used to before it all got changed round.
I know how good it is for changes but for blind people like myself if it works, well don't break the interface.
Then again I haven't looked for a classic theme for accessibility but then I really shouldn't have to should I?
Its a little regression.
Otherwise I really like thhe program for what it is.
The biggest thing out of all that is the progras and the status bar being on its own tab stating what it is.
Previously status bar showed progress but I never had to worry about it.

Comment 1

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

Yeah, the "Show Spaces toolbar" button is not really status information. Similar with the "Today Pane" button, but that is at the end of the status bar, so it is less intrusive.

I think we can keep the "Show Spaces toolbar" button in the same location, but we should probably shrink the area with the "status" role to just the relevant status information.

(In reply to sm.everiss from comment #0)

In addition if I hide the bar and click to show it doesn't return

If this is a separate issue, can you give some more steps to describe what you are doing here and what the problem is?

but as I say there is a lot of info about spaces bar to open or close it and while its usefull I really don't need that thing appearing, its an extra tab and right now the only way to stop most of that is to turn off status bar.

How much is the extra tab stop a bother? I think we will need to keep it reachable via tab.

Related to this, is another issue but I am unsure if I should post it as its own.
Basically thunderbird progress when checking mail, etc is not happening or at least thats stats has changed so nvda doesn't read it.
Of course I am unsure if this has to do with turning off of the status bar.

Is this a change from version 91? How are you reading the status information? Live notifications from the status bar were turned off a while ago in bug 1628891, so it probably requires an explicit request from the user to be read out. I'm not familiar with NVDA, but are you using something like Insert+End to prompt NVDA to read the status bar?

If you have hidden the status bar through the View menu, then there would be no status bar for NVDA to read, so this would not work.

Comment 2

[sm.everiss]

Hi henry.

Ok the status bar I can get used to, its more that it says statusbar then what it is I don't care for.

If status is off then thats not saying status bar anymore but it never used to do that reguardless in 91.
As for progress bars, when mail is checked or sent nvda will read out the progress bars automatically presented with a percentage or beep to see what the email is.
Now I can have the thing read what is coming in as in message number 1 of whatever but obviously that can get a little ownerous and annoying to listen to all the time.
I have never used beta releases and only stable ones but maybe something changed in regions or something I am not a dev just a user at least for stable releases.
Its been suggested on the screen reader list that an addon could be modified for this purpose however really I never needed any extra modules for the use of mozilla products like firefox, etc and I really don't see a reason to use one now.
I am unsure if this effects jaws or other readers as such though.

Comment 3

[sm.everiss]

Hi all.
Ok just to note to all that this issue is filed with the screenreader github.
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/13855
Comment on either

Comment 4

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

I think you may be reporting separate issues and I'll try and pick them out.

(In reply to sm.everiss from comment #2)

Ok the status bar I can get used to, its more that it says statusbar then what it is I don't care for.

When does NVDA announce "status bar"? How is it triggered? Are you navigating into the status bar or using a prompt like Insert+End to read it from where ever you are?

I would imagine that announcing the "status bar" role is an NVDA preference, the same as announcing "button".

As for progress bars, when mail is checked or sent nvda will read out the progress bars automatically presented with a percentage or beep to see what the email is.

OK. Announcing the progress bar seems to be controlled by an NVDA preference. As far as I can tell, there were no changes made to the progress bar within the status bar between version 91 and 102. So I don't have much of an idea what caused the change for you.

Just to be clear: are you referring to the progress bar that tracks the percent of messages downloaded? Once the download is finished, that bar is hidden. So it could be that the progress bar is never shown in the first place, or completes very quickly, so isn't announced.

Comment 5

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

(In reply to Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry] from comment #1)

Yeah, the "Show Spaces toolbar" button is not really status information. Similar with the "Today Pane" button, but that is at the end of the status bar, so it is less intrusive.

I think we can keep the "Show Spaces toolbar" button in the same location, but we should probably shrink the area with the "status" role to just the relevant status information.

@aleca there seem to be a couple of issues mentioned here, but I think we can focus on this to start. Do you have NVDA on your Windows machine to test this?

Comment 6

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I can't seem to be able to focus with the keyboard on the status bar as that area doesn't seem to be keyboard accessible.

The default setting of NVDA is reading what's underneath the mouse pointer, so moving from a section or element to another will read it entirely.
When clicking on the "Show spaces toolbar" button in the Status Bar, NVDA reads:
"Status bar, Spaces toolbar, toolbar, Vertical toolbar for switching between different spaces. Use the arrow keys to navigate the available buttons."
That's a lot...
The initial "Status Bar" read is because the click happens on the "Show spaces toolbar button" which doesn't seem to have any readable attribute by NVDA, therefore it registers the click on the status bar underneath.

When closing/collapsing the Spaces toolbar, the focus moves to the Pinned Spaces Toolbar button, which reads:
"Toolbar, open spaces menu button submenu one of six", which also seems like a lot, but I don't think we can control this.

Comment 7

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

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #6)

I can't seem to be able to focus with the keyboard on the status bar as that area doesn't seem to be keyboard accessible.

Screen readers can have a command that reads out the status bar, regardless of where the focus is. I think by default with NVDA on desktop it would be Insert+End (see section 5.2 https://www.nvaccess.org/files/nvda/documentation/userGuide.html).

In any case, I think we should remove role="status" and aria-live="off" from this line https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/70f9a971db10339da36acca1413ce7a9786ac5f0/mail/base/content/messenger.xhtml#909-910 and wrap it around (probably) these elements instead https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/70f9a971db10339da36acca1413ce7a9786ac5f0/mail/base/content/messenger.xhtml#918-926. I don't think we need to include the calendar stuff, since the "today pane" button should similarly not be a status, and the other parts are for event or task editing in a tab, but they are an odd mix of stuff that isn't shown when editing in a tab.

I have a simple patch for this that works with Orca, so we can test if it works for NVDA as well.

Comment 8

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

Attachment: Bug 1777184 - Place the "status" role of the status bar only around the appropriate elements. r=aleca

Comment 9

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

sm.everiss: This bug will close since the patch addresses the title of the bug by moving the "show spaces toolbar" button outside of the status bar.

Regarding the other issues you mentioned, if you are able to separate them and give more details, including all the steps you take to expose them, then we can open separate bugs for them.

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/4a226a9e1cc8
Place the "status" role of the status bar only around the appropriate elements. r=aleca

Comment 11

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

Comment on attachment 9286398 [details]
Bug 1777184 - Place the "status" role of the status bar only around the appropriate elements. r=aleca

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #): bug 1665511
User impact if declined: Status bar contains information not relevant to the status. This makes the "read status bar" screen reader commands less useful.
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): Tested with Orca on Daily.
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): Low. This was a small patch.

Comment 12

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

Comment on attachment 9286398 [details]
Bug 1777184 - Place the "status" role of the status bar only around the appropriate elements. r=aleca

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #): bug 1665511
User impact if declined: Status bar contains information not relevant to the status. This makes the "read status bar" screen reader commands less useful.
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): Tested with Orca.
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): Low. This was a small patch.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9286398 [details]
Bug 1777184 - Place the "status" role of the status bar only around the appropriate elements. r=aleca

[Triage Comment]
Approved for esr102

Comment 14

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 102.1.1:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr102/rev/ffee25a2425d