Bug 127201 - Screenreader accessibility issue with LibreOffice extension manager
Summary: Screenreader accessibility issue with LibreOffice extension manager
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Extensions (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
6.4.0.0.alpha1+
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility, implementationError
Depends on:
Blocks: a11y, Accessibility Extension-Manager
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2019-08-28 14:04 UTC by William Gathoye
Modified: 2023-03-10 06:16 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Thunderbird Extension page (29.22 KB, image/png)
2019-08-28 18:25 UTC, William Gathoye
Details
Thunderbird activity manager dialog (43.48 KB, image/png)
2019-08-28 18:28 UTC, William Gathoye
Details
LibreOffice dictionary lists (854.23 KB, image/png)
2019-08-29 13:49 UTC, William Gathoye
Details

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Description William Gathoye 2019-08-28 14:04:05 UTC
Description:
Michel Such, a prominent contributor to the French translation of NVDA, an open source screenreader, has reported to us (via the LibreOfficeFR Twitter account) an issue with the accessibility of the LibreOffice extension manager.

Usually when we are in a dialog box, a screen reader like NVDA is reading aloud the name of the control, its type (button, textarea, etc.) and the state of the control (checked, unchecked, radio selected, etc.). This happens each time the user presses the Tab key.

The extension manager has different controls: one to check for extensions updates, one control to add an extension and check boxes to choose which type of extension we want to display.

The issue we have here is that even if we ask the screen reader to read aloud all controls of this extension manager dialog box, the control corresponding to the list of installed extensions is not found.

In practice, this list should be found and we should be able to move up/down in this list using the keyboard arrow to choose a specific extension we want to control (disable/enable/remove).

An example we should take inspiration on is the extension manager of the Thunderbird mail client whose accessibility is working nicely.


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install a screenreader like NVDA on Windows 10
2. Open the extension manager
3. Read the controls
4. Realize the extension list is not detected properly.

Actual Results:
The extension list is not detected properly/read aloud

Expected Results:
The extension list detected properly/read aloud and being able to navigate using arrows easily.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
Comment 1 William Gathoye 2019-08-28 14:06:08 UTC
We asked the reported for more clarifications. We want to know whether the extension manager of Thunderbird he was referring to was the one we currently have with the current version of Thunderbird (the web based version) or if he was referring to an old version of Thunderbird using a dedicated dialog box (similar to what we currently have with LibreOffice).
Comment 2 V Stuart Foote 2019-08-28 14:42:59 UTC
Confimred on Windows 10 Home with NVDA 2019.1 and recent master 6.4.0alpha1 build
Version: 6.3.0.4 (x64)
Build ID: 057fc023c990d676a43019934386b85b21a9ee99
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0; UI render: default; VCL: win; 
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded

Though the Extension Manager's dialog controls are assigned accessible events and all sound in AT, the  list box of extensions is not being assigned accessible events when built. And, unfortunately the list entries are also not exposed to NVDA's object navigation. Suspect it will be the same for ORCA use.

Claiming implementation error in that we are omitting accessible events where they are clearly needed for AT.

@Caolán, seems similar to the tree view of expert config stanzas (bug 99609)--and of equal impact on UX when dependent on AT. Is there an efficient way to expose elements of these list items to AT?
Comment 3 William Gathoye 2019-08-28 18:25:43 UTC
Created attachment 153719 [details]
Thunderbird Extension page

What the the bug reporter (Michel) meant by extension page of Thunderbird
Comment 4 William Gathoye 2019-08-28 18:28:15 UTC
Created attachment 153720 [details]
Thunderbird activity manager dialog

Contrary to the extension page, the activity manager of Thunderbird is what is the most comparable to our extension manager dialogs.

The activity manager seems to be properly accessible as well.
Comment 5 William Gathoye 2019-08-29 13:49:00 UTC
Created attachment 153735 [details]
LibreOffice dictionary lists

For the record, and like specified by Michel on Twitter, the lists we have in the LibreOffice options to choose which dictionary we want to enable and their options, are lists that are properly accessible via screen readers.
Comment 6 Caolán McNamara 2019-09-02 08:31:23 UTC
What version of LibreOffice was the report against ? Is it a regression against some version where it did work, or is it the case it never worked ?
Comment 7 William Gathoye 2019-09-02 15:34:35 UTC
Hi Caolan,

I'm reporting against master, no specific version in mind.

According to Michel, this is a problem that has been persistent from the very first moment he tested LibreOffice back in the days of the 5.x release.

He assumes this never worked properly actually.

But I confirm the importance of such an issue. We had several blind people at the last hackfest organized by the French community and the dialog box of the extension manager has been mentioned several times to have accessibility issues, like this one.
Comment 8 William Gathoye 2019-09-02 15:34:51 UTC
So this isn't a regression IMHO.
Comment 9 QA Administrators 2019-09-03 16:12:57 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 10 Michel Such 2019-09-22 05:45:54 UTC
Hello, I'm the original reporter of this a11y problem, and I confirm it still exists.
Comment 11 Xisco Faulí 2019-09-26 15:21:23 UTC
is it related to bug 126935 ?
Comment 12 William Gathoye 2019-09-28 16:22:38 UTC
Hi Xisco,

It depends what you mean by related.

While this is related to accessibility, this isn't related to the "Area containing context of error" like described at bug 126935.

We are speaking of a list area containing items here, not some sort of tooltips like 126935.
Comment 13 Muhammet Kara 2020-02-11 20:16:11 UTC
I confirm that the issue still exists on:

Version: 7.0.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: e4ee4c5abfbdea48ddcf946f23e3d582ad8e669e
CPU threads: 16; OS: Linux 5.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; 
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded


The screen-reader (orca) only reads "drawing area" for the extensions list.
Comment 14 QA Administrators 2022-02-11 03:40:35 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 15 Michael Weghorn 2023-03-10 06:15:16 UTC
Still reproducible in current master, and also on Linux. 

Looking at the a11y tree in accerciser, there's no a11y representation of the extensions (items in the extension list), just a single unnamed object for the whole pane that contains the items.

Version: 7.6.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 1b1a2031140029f6f6d90634edd1e509adc8b1da
CPU threads: 12; OS: Linux 6.1; UI render: default; VCL: qt6 (qfont+xcb)
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 16 Michael Weghorn 2023-03-10 06:16:38 UTC
There's also an issue in NVDA's issue tracker:
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/651

(But this clearly looks like a LO bug.)