WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria for live chat

for

From: cb
Date: Sep 23, 2020 7:12PM


I think this is my first "what criterion do I fail this under" question!

Many websites have chat features where you activate a button to open a
non-modal chat window that floats in the corner of the page. You type your
questions into a text field, and see responses from the agent in the same
window. I've seen a bunch of these lately, and some of them repeat the
entire conversation from the beginning any time a screenreader user types a
new message or an agent sends a reply. This makes it unusable for
screenreader users, it's impossible to pick out the new messages from the
endless repetitions. I'm looking for WCAG 2.0 AA criteria that would apply
to this situation, though I'd also be interested to hear if WCAG 2.1 or
beyond has added anything relevant.

Thanks

Caroline