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From: KellyFord
Date: Mon, May 07 2018 4:11PM
Subject: Screen Reader Usable Baseball Standings
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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

From: Pratik Patel
Date: Tue, May 08 2018 7:26AM
Subject: Re: Screen Reader Usable Baseball Standings
← Previous message | Next message →

Hi, Kelly,

It looks like Yahoo sports also has listings provided via tabular data. They separate the information via league and division. The column headings appear to be defined but not the rows. See the URL here: https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/standings/

Regards,

Pratik

From: Jim Allan
Date: Tue, May 08 2018 9:37AM
Subject: Re: Screen Reader Usable Baseball Standings
← Previous message | Next message →

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 ADDRESS 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

From: JR Accessibility
Date: Tue, May 08 2018 12:47PM
Subject: Re: Screen Reader Usable Baseball Standings
← Previous message | Next message →

I wonder if a different approach to baseball standings, other than simply
reading the tabular data, would be more appropriate.

If you were sitting across the table from me and I wanted to explain the
American League East standings and win loss records to you, I would not say
the following:

"OK, remember the order of teams I'm going to tell you. Red Sox, Yankees,
Blue Jays, Rays, Orioles. Their win loss records are 25 and 9, 24 and 10,
19 and 16, 15 and 17, 8 and 26. You got all that? You surely remember the
Yankees' win loss record now, right?"

No. Of course I wouldn't say that. That would be unhelpful.

What I would say is something like the following:

"The Red Sox are in first place in the American League East with a record
of 25 and 9. Yankees in second place, 24 and 10. Blue Jays in third place,
19 and 16. Rays in fourth place, 15 and 17. Orioles in fifth place, 8 and
26."

This would be a much more natural way to convey the information in spoken
form.

From: Pratik Patel
Date: Tue, May 08 2018 3:11PM
Subject: Re: Screen Reader Usable Baseball Standings
← Previous message | Next message →

Hello,

You are right in that the information being conveyed via spoken form could be different. But the difference here is that the information , in this case, is generally obtained by using keyboard navigation. It provides far more flexibility in how the user can interact with that info. If the information were to be provided via a spoken interface (with no exploration via visual/keyboard means), its conveyance would have to slightly different. This is one of the considerations when designing for information delivery via increasingly prevalent devices such as the Amazon Echo or Google Assistant.

Regards,

Pratik

From: KellyFord
Date: Tue, May 08 2018 3:18PM
Subject: Re: Screen Reader Usable Baseball Standings
← Previous message | No next message

Hi,

This is a good idea as a supplement because it can benefit a range of users but shouldn't be the default or replace the need to support accessible tables appropriately. I might be wanting an entirely different column that you think I do. Some of these standings tables have multiple data points and in fact the experience that started me on this was my discussing a column that most people wouldn't want by default. I was looking for how different teams did against other teams with winning and losing records to support something I had told someone about a particular team. That particular information isn't even available on most web sites but when I did find out, it caused me to end up viewing several sites.

I think it is also important to keep in mind that as a user I'm not looking for someone to explain something to me. I'm looking for the data to make my own judgements and interpretations.

That's by no means meant to discourage exploration of descriptive statistics and better summarizations for everyone. There does come a point when reviewing data points to answer questions becomes tough.

In fact Baseball Reference, one of the sites I mentioned, is starting to add something like what you've talked about as they adopt more video. There is an interesting blog post on this at https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2018/04/a-new-chapter-at-sports-reference/.

I also look forward to the various technologies that are being developed that will allow for all users to ask more detailed questions. As I said, reviewing data points can get tough.

From a different arena for example, I'd guess that people who can look at a weather map showing temperatures for a country can make a pretty good approximation to the question where is the warmest place in country x. Studying a table of temperatures to do the same would be tough. Yet last time I tried this, I didn't have success with either a text based search or the systems of Siri, Cortana, Google and Alexa to be able to answer that basic question.

Kelly