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From: Roel Van Gils
Date: Wed, Sep 13 2017 10:44AM
Subject: Accessible 'Live chat' solution to integrate on a website
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Hi,

I'm looking for a live chat solution (such as https://crisp.chat/) that is keyboard operable and works nicely with screenreaders. I don't think any of the available tools are fully WCAG compliant, so we probably shouldn't aim for that.

I don't care about the visual appearance, pricing, integration features (mail, Slack etc.) etc. at this point. If only the front-end were accessible, that would already make me happy.

Thanks for your advice.

Roel

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Wed, Sep 13 2017 11:55AM
Subject: Re: Accessible 'Live chat' solution to integrate on a website
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Hi,
Actually making live chat work accessibly on the web is incredibly easy and it has always confused me why this is so widely misunderstood.

There are only a couple main issues that complicate this, 1 is keyboard accessibility, which is simple by managing focus to and from the message field, and the second is conveying the incoming messages and other status messages that are visually displayed to screen reader users.

Getting incoming messages to be announced is simple using ARIA. Here is one JavaScript module that does exactly this:
https://github.com/accdc/aria-announce

Back in 2013, I created a test page to test support for this across desktop and mobile at
http://whatsock.com/tsg/Coding%20Arena/Web%20Chat%20and%20Dynamic%20Message%20Announcement/Web%20Chat%20(Static)/demo.htm

Optionally a small sound can be added to convey when incoming messages arrive to cover cases when ARIA is not supported or if people are looking at something else, but that is relatively simple to add.



Bryan Garaventa
Accessibility Fellow
Level Access, Inc.
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
415.624.2709 (o)
www.LevelAccess.com

From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: Wed, Sep 13 2017 4:40PM
Subject: Re: Accessible 'Live chat' solution to integrate on a website
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Hello:


We've had discussions about live chats a number of times on this list,
so, as I typically do, I'll include links to two previous threads, below.


One of them discusses third-party options, and should offer some good
places to start, but as always, info may have changed.


Hope these threads help.


Best,

Jennifer



WebAIM thread -- Live Chat - ARIA recommendations andor good examples
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadf65

and

WebAIM thread accessible third-party commercial online chat options
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?threadf41