1952960 - Toolbar grouping for extensions and page actions are not labeled and are not clear for users of assistive technology

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect, P3)

Description

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Many toolbar items (e.g., Accounts, Extensions, Translations, Bookmarks, Refresh) are hidden behind unclear groupings like "Pocket 1 of 4," making them difficult to find. Users prefer to initially navigate via tab so they skip over the groups especially when they are labeled after a single item, rather than a general name descriptive of 4 items.

Ensuring that both the page actions (within an awesome bar) and extensions toolbar are both programmatically labeled and have descriptive labels for these groups would resolve it for most modern screen readers.

This is a papercut that is, as few user interviews shown, preventing users to discover the entire group and to miss, i.e Accounts shortcut.

Note: JAWS screen reader has their own bug when a toolbar group on Firefox chrome UI is not being announced (by default), thus making it even worse for its users.

Comment 1

[Jared Hirsch [:jhirsch] (he/him) (Needinfo please)]

Thank for filing this bug. For optimal screen reader-ability, how should we label the groups of toolbar buttons?

By default in left-to-right focus order we have a few different groups of toolbar buttons and urlbar 'charms' (odd choice of word but that seems to be the term used in the code):

• First group of toolbar buttons: back/forward/reload toolbar buttons
• First group of urlbar charms: search provider / privacy shield / lock icon
• Then, the URL itself
• Next, the page action charms--only displayed contextually, for example, the reader mode charm is only shown when a page is determined to be 'readerable', the bookmark charm is shown on a page that can be bookmarked (about pages are excluded), and the translation charm is shown on a page displayed in another language than the user's web page preferences (I think).
• Next, the right side group of toolbar buttons: the pocket, account, and addon buttons. The app menu is also part of this group.

While this is the default layout, for toolbar buttons, note that users can use the Customize Toolbar view (App menu > More Tools > Customize toolbar...) to move buttons or split up toolbar button groups by adding the "Flexible Space" component. This flexible space can be used to split up the back, forward, and reload buttons as well. This customization is not available for urlbar charms.