Jitsi-meet: Accessibility of main site

Created on 21 Mar 2020 · 6Comments · Source: jitsi/jitsi-meet

Coming from here https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi/issues/651

I'd love to know what work has been done to evaluate this product's accessibility.

Description

Just ran the main site through https://wave.webaim.org/ and there are a few.

Current behavior

Screen Shot with WAVE toolbar

Expected Behavior

Well, there should be no errors.

Possible Solution

Test your site more with automated testing tools

Steps to reproduce

1) Download WAVE Toolbar Extension or us https://accessibilityinsights.io/

Environment details

Mac

accessibility confirmed

Source

mgifford

👍1

Most helpful comment

Just a confirmation from a blind user running the free NVDA screen reader both on Firefox and Chrome under Windows.

The web experience is really difficult to handle using a screen reader. I have identified multiple issues:

Lack of heading structure: although the site comprises different areas such as the participants list, meeting controls and any additional widgets you may want to open such as chat, there are no navigational landmarks or headings to allow a blind user to jump between the different sections quickly;
The meeting controls do not have the button role ascribed. In most cases they are identified as clickable elements with keyboard onclick events coded into them but a blind person can't navigate through them by using designated shortcuts and the state of such controls such as "on" or "off" is not reported.
Many of the controls, especially in the participants area lack labels allowing blind users to deduce the functions they serve. Some of them are clickable items, some are classical buttons but it's hard to tell what they do.
The names of participants are often abbreviated to the first letter only. Is that the experience for sighted users as well?
There are alerts displaying such as "Person X wants to speak" but there seems to be no way of interacting with them (E.G> either close it or take action).

From the brief testing I have done and shared with other blind users, the mobile apps would also need some degree of care when it comes to their accessibility. In the Android app, many buttons on the meeting screen lack labels and are placed in an illogical order of swiping using the standard swiping gestures of Talkback. They can be thus found somewhere in between the different names of participants. On the initial screen, it's difficult to tell whether our Video will be on for the meeting we are about to join or not. From what I heard the iOS app is in a similar state.

I hope the necessary accessibility improvements can be made as it would be great to be able to utilize a decentralized meeting platform with the same degree of comfort some commercial solutions can be used with.

Good luck and if any advice is needed, do not hesitate to ask.

Piciok on 30 Mar 2020

👍4

All 6 comments

Errors from Accessibility Insights which uses the Axe accessibility engine.

AutomatedChecks_20200321_JitsiMeet.html.zip

mgifford on 21 Mar 2020

Thanks for the insight and for reporting this.

saghul on 23 Mar 2020

Just a confirmation from a blind user running the free NVDA screen reader both on Firefox and Chrome under Windows.

The web experience is really difficult to handle using a screen reader. I have identified multiple issues:

Lack of heading structure: although the site comprises different areas such as the participants list, meeting controls and any additional widgets you may want to open such as chat, there are no navigational landmarks or headings to allow a blind user to jump between the different sections quickly;
The meeting controls do not have the button role ascribed. In most cases they are identified as clickable elements with keyboard onclick events coded into them but a blind person can't navigate through them by using designated shortcuts and the state of such controls such as "on" or "off" is not reported.
Many of the controls, especially in the participants area lack labels allowing blind users to deduce the functions they serve. Some of them are clickable items, some are classical buttons but it's hard to tell what they do.
The names of participants are often abbreviated to the first letter only. Is that the experience for sighted users as well?
There are alerts displaying such as "Person X wants to speak" but there seems to be no way of interacting with them (E.G> either close it or take action).

Good luck and if any advice is needed, do not hesitate to ask.

Piciok on 30 Mar 2020

👍4

I've been noticing many users are reluctant to leave Zoom (despite its many alarming practices) because it is very accessible. Improving and demonstrating accessibility would definitely win over these individuals and organizations.

missmatsuko on 1 Apr 2020

👍2

Hi,
The team is aware of accessibility. Any reports are now grouped in the pinned issue #6090 and #3590.

I'm a community contributor and not directly affiliated with the Jitsi team.

Echolon on 13 May 2020

👍1

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.