ESC meeting minutes: 2022-05-26

[Michael Weghorn]

On 31/05/2022 12.36, Caolán McNamara wrote:
> If the overview is there are a thousand little things and not a small
> set of large scale specific projects then that's still a useful
> overview. We could still sweep them into some general themes.

Indeed. Thanks for adding the subtopics that came up during the 
discussion on the wiki page.

>> (I have also *heard* that Base seems to be most problematic in
>> general, but haven't had much to do with it myself yet.)
> 
> I wonder if it's the initial base screen (I think I might have replaced
> some custom widgets there with more standard ones which might have
> improved matters) or the "design view" rows/columns screen which is a
> custom widget, but one I think that does at least have an a11y
> implementation. In general custom widgets lead to forgotten a11y, like
> the extensions dialog.
> 
> How about math? I see a bug 140659 for math still open linked to the
> meta bug, which says "formula editor not operable with screenreaders",
> but then the commentary seems maybe less bleak

Does anyone (affected users?) have any further insights/experiences with 
either Base or Math and could say where the main a11y problems are or 
whether it's mostly working fine by now?

(For Math, might makes sense to retest that after a11y has been restored 
for the elements panel after d79c527c2a599c7821d27cf03b95cb79e2abe685 
("Use IconView in SmElementsControl"), which mentions that as a TODO in 
the commit message and Mike already has a WIP change for that.)

> Depends of what is being read out of course, missing labels for .ui
> widgetry are super trivial to fix[1]. Something not read out from a
> document can range from some small missing piece to some difficult
> total lack of a11y.

Indeed, and I've seen various root causes when looking at different 
issues, so it's really hard to say where the problems are without taking 
a closer look into the single issues.

>> The a11y meta bug tdf#101912 [1] currently lists ~200 specific
>> issues. (I also have a ranked list from Richard, CCed, a blind user
>> who uses the NVDA screen reader on Windows.)
> 
> If Richard is ok with sharing that here it could help get a general
> feel on what's lacking.

Read-only link to Richard's ranked list:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2m5cr0m8gzz027n/NvdaAndLoAccessibilityBugSummary.xlsx?dl=0

(no need to sign in, just click the "Download" button on the top left, 
and switch to the "Summary" table to see the actual list)

Since the main focus is using LO with NVDA on Windows, the basis for the 
list were:

1) all LO Bugzilla issues set as directly blocking one of tdf#60251 
(Windows a11y meta bug), tdf#101912 (general a11y meta bug) or 
tdf#103440 (sidebar a11y meta bug):
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/buglist.cgi?f1=blocked&list_id=1464413&o1=anywordssubstr&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=60251%20101912%20103440
i.e. e.g. Linux- or macOS-specific issues or PDF a11y bugs are not 
covered, since those have their own meta bugs underneath tdf#101912.

2) a list of issues related to LO/AOO from the NVDA issue tracker on Github

Since various issues have been reported for both, LO and NVDA, Richard
also matched the corresponding bug reports with each other (entries that 
have both a "LO Bug ID" and an "NVDA Bug ID").

The underlying data from the two issue trackers is mostly from one year 
ago, so newer issues don't show up unless they were blocking work on 
existing ones.

(If of any practical value for upcoming steps, the list could be updated 
or turned into a different form as needed.)