WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Thread: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools

for

Number of posts in this thread: 9 (In chronological order)

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 8:37AM
Subject: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
No previous message | Next message →

Do people have opinions about the Google Chrome accessibility
developer tools?

I have a developer who very specifically wants to build some
tests using the Google Chrome accessibility developer tools. I
haven't used any of the developer tools built into Google Chrome
because -- surprise! Like many disabled devs, I can't use Chrome
at all. Oh the irony. But the accessibility developer toolset
Google has put up is a library which doesn't require the browser
to run its audit rules, so we could possibly build it into our
automated tests, which would be fabulous.

My concern is that, given Google's history, it will be screen
reader focused (e.g. ignoring the need to have keyboard actions
on non-native elements), or worse, be written around the needs of
Chromevox rather than around the needs of technologies people
actually use. I'm looking through the code now but if anyone has
actually used it I would love to hear your opinions.

(Note I am not asking if people have opinions about Chrome,
Chromevox, or the accessibility courses Google teaches. All of
our opinions on those topics are archived in the WebAIM list
archives. ;) )

Thanks so much,

Deborah Kaplan

From: Jonathan H
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 8:45AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | Next message →

On 25 April 2014 15:37, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Like many disabled devs, I can't use Chrome at all.

Why?

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 8:49AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | Next message →

On Fri, 25 Apr 2014, Jonathan H wrote:
> On 25 April 2014 15:37, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
>> Like many disabled devs, I can't use Chrome at all.
>
> Why?

Nowhere near enough keyboard activation, doesn't work with
NaturallySpeaking.

-Deborah

From: Karl Groves
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 9:10AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | Next message →

Deborah,

The Chrome Accessibility tools are open source and available on github:
https://github.com/GoogleChrome/accessibility-developer-tools

There aren't many tests available right now, but what's there is well
written and robust. That's especially true for the utility code.


On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 10:37 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Do people have opinions about the Google Chrome accessibility
> developer tools?
>
> I have a developer who very specifically wants to build some
> tests using the Google Chrome accessibility developer tools. I
> haven't used any of the developer tools built into Google Chrome
> because -- surprise! Like many disabled devs, I can't use Chrome
> at all. Oh the irony. But the accessibility developer toolset
> Google has put up is a library which doesn't require the browser
> to run its audit rules, so we could possibly build it into our
> automated tests, which would be fabulous.
>
> My concern is that, given Google's history, it will be screen
> reader focused (e.g. ignoring the need to have keyboard actions
> on non-native elements), or worse, be written around the needs of
> Chromevox rather than around the needs of technologies people
> actually use. I'm looking through the code now but if anyone has
> actually used it I would love to hear your opinions.
>
> (Note I am not asking if people have opinions about Chrome,
> Chromevox, or the accessibility courses Google teaches. All of
> our opinions on those topics are archived in the WebAIM list
> archives. ;) )
>
> Thanks so much,
>
> Deborah Kaplan
> > > >



--

Karl Groves
www.karlgroves.com
@karlgroves
http://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgroves
Phone: +1 410.541.6829

www.tenon.io

What is this thing and what does it do?
http://vimeo.com/84970341

http://lanyrd.com/profile/karlgroves/

From: Jonathan H
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 9:18AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | Next message →

On 25 April 2014 15:49, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Nowhere near enough keyboard activation, doesn't work with
> NaturallySpeaking.

Ah, OK. I didn't want to drag it off-topic, but I was interested to know.

To answer your question, from a newbie's point of view, Chrome's AT
tools seems to be fairly spot on; the results seem to be roughly the
same as WAVE gives, the results are groups by category and severity,
the reasons are explained, and there are hyperlinks to further
explanations, for example:
https://github.com/GoogleChrome/accessibility-developer-tools/wiki/Audit-Rules#-ax_focus_02--elements-with-onclick-handlers-must-be-focusable
Plus, the tools are only ever two clicks away.

So, from this relative newbie's point of view, I've found them the
easiest way to a quick reasonably accurate overview.

To waffle off at a tangent briefly: I, like probably many devs, I came
into the accessibility world via a Google accessibility course, so I
tend to dev totally with Chromevox first as it's just so darn fast,
works straight out of the box, has a wide range of high quality
voices, and has just the shortcuts I need but no more (which is
probably where it downfalls for power users!). Sort of the polar
opposite of Windows Eyes for me. I then fire up Jaws and NVDA and
test Chrome, then Firefox and then IE.

As you can imagine, that's led to me spending a fair amount of time
filing bugs over at the Chrome and NVDA projects!

Incidentally, I've found that people tend to have formed opinions of
Chromevox from early releases - it's a fast-moving project, so it
wouldn't be fair to judge it, and Chrome, on, say, a release from last
August. I realise I'm wandering dangerously into the opinion ground
you wanted to avoid so I'll stop there!

From: Cameron Cundiff
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 9:28AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | Next message →

Hi Deborah

I've contributed to the Accessibility Developer Tools test library. What is
great about the Accessibility Developer Tools is that the raw javascript
can be wrapped in language specific scripts. Accesslint and
capybara-accessible are two examples for Ruby that I've worked on. If
you're using Ruby/Ruby on Rails, maybe take a peek:

http://about.ckundo.com/access_lint/
https://github.com/Casecommons/capybara-accessible

Best
Cameron




On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 10:37 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Do people have opinions about the Google Chrome accessibility
> developer tools?
>
> I have a developer who very specifically wants to build some
> tests using the Google Chrome accessibility developer tools. I
> haven't used any of the developer tools built into Google Chrome
> because -- surprise! Like many disabled devs, I can't use Chrome
> at all. Oh the irony. But the accessibility developer toolset
> Google has put up is a library which doesn't require the browser
> to run its audit rules, so we could possibly build it into our
> automated tests, which would be fabulous.
>
> My concern is that, given Google's history, it will be screen
> reader focused (e.g. ignoring the need to have keyboard actions
> on non-native elements), or worse, be written around the needs of
> Chromevox rather than around the needs of technologies people
> actually use. I'm looking through the code now but if anyone has
> actually used it I would love to hear your opinions.
>
> (Note I am not asking if people have opinions about Chrome,
> Chromevox, or the accessibility courses Google teaches. All of
> our opinions on those topics are archived in the WebAIM list
> archives. ;) )
>
> Thanks so much,
>
> Deborah Kaplan
> > > >

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 10:18AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | Next message →

Thanks every much to everyone who answered. It sounds like it
will be a good addition to our automated test suite. If we do
standardize on it, and write our own tests, is Google pretty
friendly about accepting new tests into the master branch?

-Deborah

From: Cameron Cundiff
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 10:34AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | Next message →

Alice Boxhall is the maintainer at Google, she's very open to contributions.


On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 12:18 PM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> Thanks every much to everyone who answered. It sounds like it
> will be a good addition to our automated test suite. If we do
> standardize on it, and write our own tests, is Google pretty
> friendly about accepting new tests into the master branch?
>
> -Deborah
>
> > > >

From: deborah.kaplan
Date: Fri, Apr 25 2014 11:06AM
Subject: Re: Google Chrome accessibility developer tools
← Previous message | No next message

Thanks, that's great to hear!

On Fri, 25 Apr 2014, Cameron Cundiff wrote:

> Alice Boxhall is the maintainer at Google, she's very open to contributions.
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 12:18 PM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
>> Thanks every much to everyone who answered. It sounds like it
>> will be a good addition to our automated test suite. If we do
>> standardize on it, and write our own tests, is Google pretty
>> friendly about accepting new tests into the master branch?
>>
>> -Deborah
>>
>> >> >> >>
> > > >
>

--