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Thread: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
Number of posts in this thread: 13 (In chronological order)
From: Dolenko, Kristen
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 7:16AM
Subject: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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Good morning.
Very concerned that a client refuses to take advice regarding piggy backing requirement to collect feedback on the accessibility of our services and website using this form: Submit your feedback to the Canada Border Services Agency (cbsa-asfc.gc.ca)<https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/contact/feedback-retroaction-eng.html?type=0>
Goes without saying that neglecting to modify the form OR the parent page makes the form un-usable for the purposes of collecting this type of feedback; however, I ran the form itself through the WebAIM tool and got 11 fails.
Does anyone have time to give me an assessment of how serious these fails are?
Kristen Dolenko
Senior Web Strategist / Conseilleure principale en stratégie Web
E-Communications, Strategic Policy / DG politique stratégique
Canada Border Services Agency / Agence des services frontaliers du Canada
mobile: 1-343-551-2896
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 8:16AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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A 5-min assessment tells me this form is pretty bad.
There are tons of unlabeled fields, some labels associated with
multiple fields, buttons with unclear labels (what are the + and -
buttons). Lots of form control instructions that should be associated
with the fields, grouped labels that are not properly grouped.
Given how long this form is and the collection of accessibility issues
I personally would not bother filling it in. I'd rather call or go on
social media.
On 12/8/22, Dolenko, Kristen < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Good morning.
> Very concerned that a client refuses to take advice regarding piggy backing
> requirement to collect feedback on the accessibility of our services and
> website using this form: Submit your feedback to the Canada Border Services
> Agency
> (cbsa-asfc.gc.ca)<https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/contact/feedback-retroaction-eng.html?type=0>
>
> Goes without saying that neglecting to modify the form OR the parent page
> makes the form un-usable for the purposes of collecting this type of
> feedback; however, I ran the form itself through the WebAIM tool and got 11
> fails.
>
> Does anyone have time to give me an assessment of how serious these fails
> are?
>
> Kristen Dolenko
> Senior Web Strategist / Conseilleure principale en stratégie Web
> E-Communications, Strategic Policy / DG politique stratégique
> Canada Border Services Agency / Agence des services frontaliers du Canada
>
> mobile: 1-343-551-2896
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
>
> > > > >
--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.
From: Dolenko, Kristen
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 8:29AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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ouch. Thanks for the feedback.
Kristen Dolenko
mobile: 1-343-551-2896
From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 8:37AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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The form is good in terms of some factors such as colour contrast of text and keyboard operability, but it's bad in other respects such as the colour contrast of focus indicators. In terms of assistive technology support, it starts well but then there are all the unlabelled form controls that Birkir mentions.
As such, many people with disabilities will have no problem using the form, but it will be difficult or impossible for others.
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd
From: Dolenko, Kristen
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 8:49AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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Interesting. So generally speaking, people with visual impairments would be unable to use it, correct?
Kristen Dolenko
Senior Web Strategist / Conseilleure principale en stratégie Web
E-Communications, Strategic Policy / DG politique stratégique
Canada Border Services Agency / Agence des services frontaliers du Canada
mobile: 1-343-551-2896
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 9:00AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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It depends on the nature and severity of their visual impairment. People who are totally blind will have the most difficulty. Some people with low vision or colour perception impairment may have difficulty if they use keyboard navigation because some focus indicators have low colour contrast, but this is not a problem if they use a mouse.
Accessibility is rarely (perhaps never) a binary accessible / inaccessible matter. The level of accessibility is invariably different for people with different needs. You could probably design content that is inaccessible to everyone, but in practice that rarely happens, at least since GeoCities was terminated.
Steve
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 9:33AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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Someone who is totally blind could probably complete the form but it
would take them likely twice as long + requiring 2 or 3 tries to
submit it.
Again, just fixing label association and grouping (which would not
impact the look and feel) could significant improve this.
On 12/8/22, Steve Green < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> It depends on the nature and severity of their visual impairment. People who
> are totally blind will have the most difficulty. Some people with low vision
> or colour perception impairment may have difficulty if they use keyboard
> navigation because some focus indicators have low colour contrast, but this
> is not a problem if they use a mouse.
>
> Accessibility is rarely (perhaps never) a binary accessible / inaccessible
> matter. The level of accessibility is invariably different for people with
> different needs. You could probably design content that is inaccessible to
> everyone, but in practice that rarely happens, at least since GeoCities was
> terminated.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
From: Dolenko, Kristen
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 9:59AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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Thanks so much for the additional context, Birkir. This is ample ammunition to take back to my clients. They'll need to do better.
Kristen Dolenko
Senior Web Strategist / Conseilleure principale en stratégie Web
E-Communications, Strategic Policy / DG politique stratégique
Canada Border Services Agency / Agence des services frontaliers du Canada
From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 10:02AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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Birkir, were you able to make sense of the sections of the form containing consecutive unlabelled textboxes? Did you understand what the buttons after those textboxes are for? NVDA announces them as "button plus" and "button", so their purpose may be ambiguous.
Steve
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 11:44AM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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If I really really wanted to fill those fields out I would've counted
the labels and matched up the numbers with the inputs. This means I
probably would get it right eventually but almost certainly after
trying to submit a couple of times with errors.
(in other words I would give up before then)
No idea what the buttons do, I figured I could after pressing them and
exploring the form after to see the difference, but I didn't check
them.
With the labels, you can fix both content order and screen reader
announcement by adding an aria-owns to the for attribute for the
label, the value of both is the id of the input.
So
<label for="ip1" aria-owns="ip1">First name</label>
<label for="ip2" aria-owns="ip2">Last name</label>
<input type="text" id="ip1">
<input type="text" id="ip2">
would be exposed to a screen reader as First name label, first name
input, last name label, last name input.
This is one of the couple of hacks where aria-owns can come in handy.
Of course the solution is to change the source order but sometimes you
got to be creative.
On 12/8/22, Steve Green < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Birkir, were you able to make sense of the sections of the form containing
> consecutive unlabelled textboxes? Did you understand what the buttons after
> those textboxes are for? NVDA announces them as "button plus" and "button",
> so their purpose may be ambiguous.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 12:03PM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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Visually, the text labels look like column headers in a data table, and the textboxes are in a row beneath them. The plus button adds more rows of textboxes. The button that appears to be unlabelled removes the rows. The button label is a minus sign, but NVDA does not announce it with the default verbosity setting. Despite looking like a data table, the content is not marked up as a table so it just appears to be a linear sequence of 4 text labels followed by a multiple of 4 textboxes depending on how many rows have been added. Visually it makes perfect sense, but I wonder how many screen reader users would be able to work it out.
Steve
From: David Farough
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 1:55PM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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I didn't notice that!
I have some vision, but not enough to pick that up I guess.
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Thu, Dec 08 2022 4:07PM
Subject: Re: Form to be used to collect A11y feedback
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If I tried to add more unlabeled fields to this form there is no way I
could fill it in correctly, and that's with 30+ years of screen reader
user experience, including a Jaws certification translating NVDA (into
Icelandic) and years as a screen reader instructor.
On 12/8/22, David Farough < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I didn't notice that!
> I have some vision, but not enough to pick that up I guess.
>
>