Joomla 1.5. Live Test blind user Eva Papst: Summary
Eva spent two and a half days to learn the basics of the Joomla backend.
Her final statement :
” Although there is a lack of assessibility features, the backend is usable with various screenreaders.
Sometimes it is helpful to switch between them. I would define the difference between an usable system and an accessible system as follows:A usable system is one that I can handle with a lot of patience and time, but my attention is occupied by the system itself.
Using an accessible system I can concentrate my energy on the work as such. “
This weekend was very fascinating for me. To be honest, I haven’t expected Eva to be able to use the backend at all.
So I was happy to see that she can use the system. Eva is an expert in using screenreaders. She knows which screenreader can handle special problems best. So she switched between screenreaders to perform different tasks.
She uses Webformator in conjunction with Virgo, Windows Eyes and JAWS.
The biggest problem was one of orientation.
Sometimes she asked me:
“Help: where am I ?”.
The reason for this is missing document titles and semantic headlines.
Especially the menu wasn’t easy to use, because the screenreader reads all links to her, which are hidden to us (e.g Flyout Menu at the top). Here she had to use the tab key many times to find the correct link.
To solve her problems shouldn’t be too hard for us:
We would have to implement correct document titles and various semantic headlines and probably skip links for quicker navigation.
Please don’t forget to add these little images I talked about one article before, into the source code, and also to add proper hrefs to all onclicks for keyboard users.
This way people with disabilities will be able to use the system in an effective and efficient way.
Only then Joomla will be one step ahead.