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Re: Screen Reader Usable Baseball Standings

for

From: Jim Allan
Date: May 8, 2018 9:37AM

Kelly,
USAToday is using a CSS background image to insert a Green Up Arrow, or Red
Down Arrow before the actual digit in the streak column (last column).

Jim


On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 5:12 PM KellyFord < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
>
> I'm sure most, if not all of this, isn't much of a surprise to readers of
> this list. I do find task and exploration based explorations of
> accessibility and usability interesting though.
>
>
>
> I recently started exploring sports sites to see who might be doing a good
> job at producing usable tables by screen readers to display baseball
> standings. I'll likely have more on that in a couple weeks. Right now my
> exploration has roughly 25 sites for this one task.
>
>
>
> My basic exploration was just to see how baseball standings were with
> respect to usability assuming a default install of a screen reader, without
> having to make any adjustments to web settings, and a user who is
> comfortable using table reading commands. In short can you move across a
> row and hear the cell data along with a column header to know what that
> data
> represents. Similarly, can you move down a column to compare and such and
> hear a row header to know what each row represents.
>
>
>
> Far and away the number 1 problem has been no column headers, followed by
> no
> row headers. Some screen readers do have a user option that can be
> adjusted
> to compensate for these shortcomings. That setting makes a big difference.
>
>
>
> So far the first site I've found that uses both column and row headers and
> does not have data itself that isn't readable (see my USA Today example) is
> Baseball Reference at
> https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB-standings.shtml. Even
> there,
> it is interesting though because the row headers in the expanded standings
> are just the ranking numbers of the teams. So as you move down a column in
> the expanded standings, you still really don't know what team is being
> covered. This one is particularly interesting because as far as I know
> there's no way to even correct for this by an end user with today's screen
> readers where what you really want is the first two columns to be the row
> header or maybe just the second column.
>
>
>
> As a part of those explorations one site I tried was USA Today's at:
>
> https://www.usatoday.com/sports/mlb/standings/
>
>
>
> One interesting discovery, was how different the results were between
> Chrome, IE, Firefox and Edge on Windows and yet similar with both JAWS and
> NVDA between browsers. Just exploring if the basic table was discovered
> and
> read (ignoring automatic reading of headers and such) IE and Edge were
> successful with both screen readers. Both screen readers in Chrome,
> however, had trouble when it came to the actual data in the tables. They
> more or less treated the column header row as a table. By that I mean
> commands in each screen reader to move through the row a cell at a time
> were
> successful. When it came to the data rows, each row of cells, was treated
> as if it was one combined row though. In short table navigation commands
> could not move left/right through the row of data. Additionally, once you
> moved into the data, commands to move up and down a column also failed in
> Chrome and Firefox browsers.
>
>
>
> USA Today thus far though is one of the few sites I've found that uses the
> Team names as row headers, meaning that as a user moves down a column, the
> team names can be communicated automatically without having to make other
> adjustments to the screen reading table reading options. Unfortunately,
> the
> last column, which tells you the current win/loss streak for a team,
> appears
> to use some visual indication exclusively to tell you if the number
> represents a winning or losing streak.
>
>
>
> ESPN was also interesting as it seems to be variation on a theme I asked
> about here last week. In this case it seems that the row headers, again
> the
> team names, are what are separated into a separate table. As I mentioned
> last week, most other sites where I've started to encounter this are
> separating out the column headers. ESPN's page for baseball standings is
> at: http://www.espn.com/mlb/standings.
>
>
>
> MLB, that has over the years worked on accessibility, appears to have gone
> in reverse in this situation. Teams in their standings, are not row
> headers
> at http://mlb.com/mlb/standings/index.jsp.
>
>
>
> Fox Sports, at https://www.foxsports.com/mlb/standings, leaves team names
> out as row headers. Interestingly, due to how the teams are created with
> alt text and text though, you do hear the mascot part of each team name
> twice such as Milwaukee Brewers Brewers when reading the page.
>
>
>
> The inline answers provided by Google and Bing when searching for the term
> baseball standings were also interesting. Both used a table but Google had
> no column headers. Bing's table had column headers but no row headers.
> Further, if a user opted to try the screen reader setting to treat the
> first
> cell in a row as the row header, for Bing it would be just a number
> representing the team's rank in their division. Team names are in column
> 3.
> Column 2 appears to be an image with the null alt tag that results in a
> range of experiences from a screen reader saying blank to image to link and
> image depending on the screen reader and browser combination when using
> table reading commands.
>
>
>
> My comparisons involved the latest versions of Chrome, IE, Firefox and Edge
> with the latest versions of JAWS and NVDA for all browsers. Narrator with
> Edge was also used. These are very preliminary results based on the
> previously described screen reader usage pattern and an initial browse of
> the page's underlying HTML.
>
>
>
> If there is anyone who's interested in accessibility and baseball who wants
> to assist me with my exploration, please reach out. I'm undertaking this
> effort to answer my basic question about how sports sites are doing on this
> basic task along with trial and use of the various developer tools in
> browsers and accessibility testing tools today to see what combination of
> browser developer tools and screen reader works well for my use.
>
>
>
> No commentary on the level of accessibility of any web site mentioned here
> is implied or intended. This is one user's snapshot experience of trying
> to
> perform one task. Formal accessibility testing involves much more and
> other
> tools than screen readers are better starting points. Additionally, I have
> no firm data on the percentage of screen reading users who use table
> reading
> commands and do not believe that questions on that are currently asked in
> even the WebAIM screen reading surveys.
>
>
>
> Thank you,
>
>
>
> Kelly
>
> > > > >


--
Jim Allan, Accessibility Coordinator
Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
1100 W. 45th St., Austin, Texas 78756
voice 512.206.9315 fax: 512.206.9452 http://www.tsbvi.edu/
"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." McLuhan, 1964