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Thread: WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria for live chat

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From: cb
Date: Wed, Sep 23 2020 7:12PM
Subject: WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria for live chat
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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

From: Laura Fathauer
Date: Thu, Sep 24 2020 6:47AM
Subject: Re: WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria for live chat
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WCAG 2.1 added 4.1.3 Status Messages that discusses specifically screen
reader text, but this wouldn't necessary fall in the category of a "status
message" like an error or an alert would. The extended description of 4.1.3
does include this note: " Live regions and alerts can be usefully applied
in many situations where a change of content takes place which does not
constitute a status message, as defined in this Success Criterion. However,
there is a risk of making an application too "chatty" for a screen reader
user."

In their aria-live region they should only be doing "additions". It may be
due to their programming that the entire region is being interpreted as an
"addition", but that would be something to debug in their javascript and
web coding.

Aria-relevant values
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/ARIA_Techniques/Using_the_aria-relevant_attribute>

.Laura


On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 9:12 PM cb < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> 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
> > > > >

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Thu, Sep 24 2020 7:13AM
Subject: Re: WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria for live chat
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I believe there may have been some recent assistive technology/browser bugs that were causing chat interfaces that should have functioned correctly to speak too much information. Since the default for aria-relevant is "additions text" I suspect this may be causing some of these previously accessible chats to become usable.

Jonathan

From: Lucy GRECO
Date: Thu, Sep 24 2020 10:34AM
Subject: Re: WCAG 2.0 AA success criteria for live chat
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hello:
i think the question here is what is if any the faling criteria if the
screenreader does this. we know why its happening ut what can we tell
them there failing thanks lucy Lucia Greco
Web Accessibility Evangelist
IST - Architecture, Platforms, and Integration
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
Follow me on twitter @accessaces



On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 6:13 AM Jonathan Avila < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:

> I believe there may have been some recent assistive technology/browser
> bugs that were causing chat interfaces that should have functioned
> correctly to speak too much information. Since the default for
> aria-relevant is "additions text" I suspect this may be causing some of
> these previously accessible chats to become usable.
>
> Jonathan
>
>