WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: accessible third-party commercial online chat options

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Nov 16, 2014 7:44PM

Microsoft Lync 2010 works pretty well for chat as well as call and
screen sharing features (the most accessible program that I, as a
screen reader user, have used for this purpose).
Unfortunately Lync 2013 breaks a lot of that functionality (which is
inexplicable and I have a difficult time understanding how that could
happen, but it did).
For those who have Office 2010, you have a good option, but be careful
upgrading when you want to rely on Lync as your chat solution.
Google Hangouts is actually not too bad, if you avoid Internet
Explorer (at least I have never been able to get the sound to work),
and if you understand that hangouts.google.com is actually the one
place you are unable to start anything hangout related, it is just
promotional stuff.
If you start a Hangout meeting from Google calendar, join a meeting
invite with a Google Hangout URL or use Google Plus, it is not too
bad.

There are accessibility markup issues, such as simultaneous use of
labels and aria that actually confuse the user
(what does it mean when the label on a button is "unmute" and its
aria-pressed attribute is "true", screen reader will say "unmute
button pressed").
But you can use the voice/video chat features, share your screen and
do the online chat (though Hangouts will not notify you of incoming
chat messages, you have to look yourself).
No more than 10 participants (15 if you are a corporation account) can
use Hangouts simultaneously, which is a limiting factor.
Skype is somewhat limited but useful, especially together with an Irc channel.
So is the client used by http://easi.cc for their webinars.
The Acrobat Pod client has accessibility issues, particularly with the
online text chat portion (I have only tried it once and that was
around a year ago, you can see specific comments on that in the GAAD
Paciello Group discussion that unfortunately turned into blasting that
one aspect rather than discussing some of the good things that hapTPG
was doing, but hopefully we can take something positive out of that
experience).

I am a little confused here, whether this was the original question or not.
If the question is, what web-based customer service chat works
appropriate with aria live regions, there are a few.
State Farm Canada's online chat works nicely, but getting to it for
testing purposes requires going through some data.
It is a very good example of the appropriate use of aria live regions.
I have heard that Bank of America´s online customer service chat is
not bad actually.
What they do is to play a little "ding" sound when a customer service
rep posts a message.
When used in combination with a live region, I think we are on to something.
hth
-B


On 11/15/14, Jennifer Sutton < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Belated thanks to responses to this question that I received, both
> off and onlist.
>
>
> A similar thread was started later, here:
> http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6665
>
> Jennifer
>
> > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.