Forum Discussion
Accessibility - Screen Reader Skips 95% of content
Hello!
I'm working on a project that needs to be compatible with our company's standard screen reader program called NVDA. For accessibility standards here, the learner must be able to complete the course with their keyboard.
I have made sure all items that need to be accessible are checked as being visible to accessibility tools. I've moved the items that are being skipped to the top of the Focus Order. The items being skipped are in a scrolling panel (not the automatic one like it does for text boxes). I've tried making the scrolling panel visible to accessibility tools, as well.
Using the tab key on the keyboard, it skips right over the content in the scrolling panel. Using the Up and Down arrow keys, it eventually gets to the content in the scrolling panel (for me) but it's buried deep.
When I have a coworker test, using the same version of NVDA, they have the same experience with the Tab key but not the Up and Down arrow keys. When they use the arrow keys they can never reach the content in the scrolling panel.
This is a chat simulation, the learner chats with a sim customer who is actually ChatGPT. Each time a new reply comes in from the bot (green) that is a new slide. So with each new slide, the screen reader starts over starting at the player wrapper and other elements before getting to the speech bubbles with the up and down arrows (again for me).
The experience is not consistent, I've gotten it to read the chat bubbles on slide start once...maybe twice with the arrow keys. Sometimes when a slide starts it just reads everything in one go without any button presses. Like...reads everything everywhere.
We have other modules which have text boxes populated with variable values. When the values exceed the size of the text box it adds the auto-scrollbar. In these instances, the screen reader still reads it without issue.
Please see the attached video for a demonstration of my experience. I've also attached the .story file, but it will not work in full for you since you must be connected to our network and I've had to remove some items for security purposes that will cause functionality issues.
Any help or guidance would be appreciated. Hoping I've just missed something simple!
Thank you!
Thanks for your reply. I've tried moving the scroll panel before the chat bubbles in the focus order but no luck, same experience.
All content on the slides must be accessible by the reader, so I can't turn off things on the subsequent slides. I've moved the chat bubbles to the top of the focus order but it doesn't seem to make any difference. :/
You should use the up down arrows for text, the tab keys moves to interactive objects.
I suspect the scroll panel should be before your objects. Because you jump slides you have to decide what you want to do, as it will reread content if you have it repeated. Perhaps you only have it read the bubble on that slide and any interactive elements.
