The @thunderbird betas have a rewritten main window UI. This has a lot of accessibility problems. Unfortunately, I currently don’t have the energy to file the bugs myself. Here’s what I found:
1. Too many tab stops. Toolbars should definitely be a one-tabstop container and employ the ARIA toolbar design pattern.
2. Speaking of which, the containers should all be made into proper toolbar containers in the process.
3. The main messages list should be a tree with tree items, since they are collapsible. List and list items are not. Also, there are a lot of focus issues still remaining when deleting messages/threads or when the view refreshes from the IMAP server.
Perhaps someone on the team can convert these into proper bugs in Bugzilla, or maybe most of these are already filed. Like I said, I unfortunately currently lack the energy to do so myself.
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Brandon
•Peter Vágner
Marco Zehe
•Peter Vágner
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1819276
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1826546
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1825993
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1822048
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1822057
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1821988
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1819281
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1822064
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1823091
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1825864
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1825925
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1826938
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1826518
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1824692
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643467
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1698059
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1688014
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1825588
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1825870
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1823856
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1826879
Robert Kingett reshared this.
Thunderbird
•Peter Vágner likes this.
Peter Vágner
Just to add into it here are some recent accessibility related enhancements I have recognized.
reporting message columns is now greatly inproved in Thunderbird 114, it is now possible to inwoke the context menu in the message list, dropdown buttons in the message reader UI can now be activated with the enter or space key.
F6 and shift+F6 navigation has been improved so it can be inwoked when filter buttons or the edit field has the focus.
Aleca
•ARIA toolbar design pattern is currently on alpha (daily) for the message pane, and it will be added to the main toolbar as well in the next months, alongside updating the container markup.
Peter Vágner likes this.
Aleca
•The message list is using the ARIA Listbox pattern which grants us more flexibility for dynamically loaded content. We have visually impaired users that tested the various builds and were saisfied
Aleca
•Thank you again for your invaluable feedback.
Cheers
Marco Zehe
•@alecaddd Hi there! Thank you so much for your quick reply! Yes, I thought so that migrating everything away from good old XUL to HTML was the reason for everything now having tab stops. And that is greatly appreciated in general. But with many controls, especially in an app context, for keyboard users some things should be streamlined so it is not only accessible in principle, but also efficient to use, and thus actually usable. I appreciate the team already diving into these bugs and making changes. Look forward to trying them out when they reach the beta channel. This is what I am on currently.
Again, thank you!