607554 - Pubmed violates WCAG & Section 508 - breaks keyboard navigation with autofocus input and requires javascript

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P5)

Description

[Garrett Smith]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100701 Firefox/3.5.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100701 Firefox/3.5.11

The automatic focus of the text input search box effectively breaks keyboard navigation. PubMed is not device independent. This violates WCAG guidelines.

PubMed is not fully functional if you turn off Javascript. This violates WCAG guideline 6.3, a Priority 1 guideline.

Reproducible: Always




Makes bug 531501 obsolete.

The automatic focus of the text input box effectively breaks keyboard navigation. I push the down arrow or spacebar and the text input gets focus.

If I am fast enough, the page scrolls down, then, upon the *second* typing of the spacebar, the javascript kicks in and focuses the text input, causing the page to scroll back up. I use laptops, primarily. Clicking and dragging the scrollbar via a trackpad is tricky. Keyboard navigation is the way to go. At first, I thought I would solve the "broken keyboard navigation" problem by turning javascript off. That ended up breaking other features, such as the search results navigational links, which require javascript and the "advanced search" (which, the rest of the site, also suffers from browser detection problems).

I have sent multiple emails to "<[e-mail]>", giving explanations of the problems, their causes, and what to do instead. I have been detailed, concise, clear, e.g. "don't use browser detection," as well as all that I explained above.

The responses I got were: 
"You can turn off the auto suggestions by signing in to My NCBI and selecting Preferences.  Under PubMed Preferences choose Auto Suggest, select Off and click Save.  Auto suggest will not work when you are signed in to My NCBI."

And:
"We hope to update our browser detection and information page as soon as we can."

And: 
"PubMed is not fully functional if you turn off Javascript."

(Note: 'not fully functional' is a gross exaggeration. 'Does not work' is more like it).

And: 
"I am sorry that I did not understand what you wrote but there is no need to be rude.  Perhaps you can try to explain what you mean.  I will kindly try to reply.  Regards, Margaret"

I went on to explain again and again. I'm trying to help but my comments are getting broshed off (Margaret does not seem to even try to understand). I use the site quite a bit, and usually on a laptop.

Comment 1

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Might help to try this page:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/About/accessibility.html

cl

Comment 2

[David E. Ross]

NIH is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.  Go to the top and try <http://www.hhs.gov/accessibilityassist.html>.

Comment 3

[Garrett Smith]

Looks like they fixed it. Nice.

Comment 4

[Garrett Smith]

"The NCBI web site requires JavaScript to function." 

Type into search box, hit Enter, and it doesn't work. 

That violates Section 508 and WCAG 1.0.

See also: bug 523852 and bug 531501 The latter was marked a dup of former, though the latter is about just a11y, while the former is more about the browser sniffing. Not sure if the a11y bug should be reopened.

Comment 5

[Garrett Smith]

(In reply to David E. Ross from comment #2)
> NIH is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.  Go
> to the top and try <http://www.hhs.gov/accessibilityassist.html>.

That page is 404.

Comment 6

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

This is a candidate for Webcompat.com

Comment 7

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

The autofocus is still going on.
This is the case for all browsers.

The page is now at http://www.hhs.gov/accessibility.html
And the assistance form is at http://wcdapps.hhs.gov/AccessibilityAssistance/

Let's push this to contactready, feel free to complete the form and switch the keyword to sitewait

Comment 8

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

See bug 1547409. Moving webcompat whiteboard tags to keywords.

Comment 9

[Oana Arbuzov [:oanaarbuzov]]

I've tried to reproduce it, but it seems to work correctly now with JavaScript enabled.

If I disable Javascript, I get the message "This site needs JavaScript to work properly. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! " and also many elements are broken, "Search" button is disabled, in the "Advanced Search" drop-down menu elements are not available, "Filters/Timeline/Display options" buttons are not functional.

Tested with:
Browser / Version: Firefox Nightly 100.0a1 (2022-03-30)
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro

Comment 10

[Raul Bucata]

We appreciate your report. I was not able to reproduce the issue. If the reporter or anyone else can reproduce the issue after following our suggestions, please feel free to re-open the issue.

Tested with:

Browser / Version: Firefox Nightly 111.0a1 (2023-01-31) (64-bit)
Operating System: Mac Ventura 13.1

Suggestion: Try clearing cache/data/cookies, disabling add-ons and Ad-blocker (if available) and extensions or use a clean profile, and check again? If there are any changes made to the default settings of the browser (e.g. in about:config) please revert to the default settings and try again. Also, have the required cookies been accepted for this page?

Comment 11

[Garrett Smith]

Do a search in the searchbox at the url given in the description to see the described behavior. E.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=humans&filter=pubt.clinicaltrial&filter=pubt.systematicreview&filter=hum_ani.humans

This is not fixed.

Comment 12

[Raul Bucata]

Thanks, Garret for the update. I can confirm that disabling the javascript.enabled pref from about:config the search box does not work. Chrome works if I disable Javascript.

Tested with:

Browser / Version: Firefox Release 109.0.1 (64-bit)/ Firefox Nightly 111.0a1 (2023-02-02) (64-bit) /Chrome Version 109.0.5414.120 (Official Build) (64-bit) /
Operating System: Mac Ventura 13.1

Notes:

1. Reproducible regardless of the status of ETP.
2. Reproducible on the latest build of Firefox Nightly and Release.
3. Works as expected using Chrome.

Comment 13

[Garrett Smith]

You apparently missed the important part about keyboard navigation being ruined by autofocus. Please read the first comment of the initial report. Subsequent comments mention this, too.

Last I checked, PubMed used JavaScript to achieve autofocus. however, turning JavaScript off didn’t fix the problem because the site doesn’t work without JavaScript.

Aside:,I see you now have site etiquette and community standards and guidelines. How weakly pathetic. Really stupid idea.

Comment 14

[Raul Bucata]

If the search bar is broken with the Javascript pref disabled, that means that all subsequent parts of the page will most likely also be broken. I did not disprove that keyboard navigation is broken, just confirmed that the search field is broken based on comment 10.

Comment 15

[Garrett Smith]

“If the search bar is broken with the Javascript pref disabled, that means that all subsequent parts of the page will most likely also be broken”

The search box autofocus is implemented with JavaScript. It is entirely possible that feature — auto focus — could not work but the site could still function.

“I did not disprove that keyboard navigation is broken, “

Broken keyboard navigation is a WCAG accessibility problem to be fixed.

Comment 16

[James Graham [:jgraham]]

This appears to be a non-browser-specific problem with a third party site, not a problem with Firefox or Gecko. We don't have the ability to handle such reports.