1783025 - Remove the Accessibility Services SUMO page

Status: NEW

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Content, task)

Description

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Product

Firefox

Select the type of request

Small change to existing article

Is the content embargoed (yes or no)?

No

What current go-to-market plans, timelines, or milestones exist?

Riding the 105 train to release. Go-live: 2022-09-20

Please include any related JIRA/Github/Bugzilla tickets, documentation, demos or practical use cases.

In bug 1773042, we removed the Accessibility Indicator. It's been preffed off by default since it originally shipped in Fx57. We have an existing SUMO article regarding this feature (see the URL field of this bug). There seems to be some other content in that article that seems useful even in the absence of the indicator, however. I'm filing this bug so we can figure out if we want to remove the article outright for 105+ or adjust its content to only the relevant remaining bits post-removal.

Please add instructions for testing or links to any design assets or visuals.

N/A

Does the content need to be localized in any languages outside of our priority locales (yes or no)?

I don't think so, but don't know for sure.

Does the content require legal review (yes or no)?

No

Comment 1

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

I (accessibility tech lead), along with Kim (accessibility product manager), think this article should be removed entirely. Some of the information is still correct strictly speaking; the accessibility engine can have a performance impact and there are tools which use it without the user necessarily being aware of it. However:

1. The accessibility indicator no longer exists. It's still possible to force disable accessibility, but this is deliberately hidden in about:config and we do not recommend it except for diagnosis or as a workaround in extreme situations.
2. If it is needed as a workaround, this should generally only be suggested at the direction of a Firefox developer.
3. As it is currently written, this article could be construed as casting accessibility in a rather negative light: as a detriment to performance and privacy, rather than as something that is essential for many users.
4. We especially do not want to encourage multi user deployments such as enterprises to disable accessibility, as this might lead to users being excluded with no recourse in some situations.
5. This article was written around the time of Firefox 57 when the performance impact of accessibility was much, much more severe. There has been a great deal of improvement since then, especially with the recent Cache the World project.
6. When users are encouraged to immediately disable accessibility in response to a performance concern, we are not able to gather data which would enable us to address the problem for all users.

Comment 2

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Hi Abby. Is there anything we can do to help move this forward? Thanks.