Accessibility: Chat History

[chigkim]

On Windows, all three screen readers (nvda, jaws, narrator) can't seem to be able to review chat history.
On Mac, users can review chat history but with a few issues.

1. When new message is received, you have to focus away from the chat history and come back. Then you can use up/down arrow to read the message.
2. You have to keep checking to see if you got a new message. Perhaps it would be helpful to have an option to turn on/off sound alert in setting when receiving a new message. I implemented a sound alert in my fork.
3. I'm not sure if it's a scrolling issue or what, but VoiceOver has a hard time accessing the full history (especially last messages). If you keep clearing the history after every few messages with command+e, it's more manageable. However, if you happen to clear right after receiving a new message, then you lose the message.

[corrados]

The idea for blind users is that each time a message was read, you clear the chat history. Then a new message should trigger the reader.

[corrados]

There is a shortcut for this. Alt+e and then just e clears the history.

[chigkim]

The workflow of having to clear the chat is not ideal. I'll play with some more and see if I could find a better workaround. I don't think many people would figure out that's the workflow you have to use since it's very unusual behavior in chat feature. Normally you would go to the end of history to see new messages. I would never guess I have to clear history in order to access new messages. Only reason I know is because someone else mentioned it.

[corrados]

We could write it in the accessibility text of the chat window. Just a short add ", after reading message, clear with Alt+e and e".

[chigkim]

The message would help, and there's a faster dedicated shortcut control+e on windows and command+e on Mac. However, another problem of clearing is that you might end up clearing as you getting a new message. Then you would never see that message. I ran into this several times especially people are sending messages in quick successions. I'll play with it some more. Could we leave this issue open until we find a better solution?

[corrados]

sure

[gilgongo]

@chigkim Hi - any update on this? Just needing to clean up the Issues a bit.

[chigkim]

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the chat history to work properly still.

[gilgongo]

OK but in so far as we know what we want to do about it we can leave this ticket open, is that right?

[chigkim]

Yes!

[ann0see]

Hi, Sorry for the maintenance noise here. I’m just into triaging issues.

@chigkim could you please summarize what's missing in order to move the accessibility problem forward in your issue description and apply the issue template?

I'm afraid that it would need almost a full redesign of the chat functionality. If that's what you think is needed, feel free to open an issue/GitHub discussion to discuss a chat system redesign.

Note: I will unsubscribe from this issue and won’t receive responses from any new comments. If you have any questions concerning maintenance (re-opening this issue if you can’t), feel free to ping me.