Hi Gerry,
I agree with you 100% here.
I have to say that I am seeing more are more awareness in the fully sighted
community with regard to using keystrokes instead of the mouse. Stellar Data
Recovery
I would hope it todays day and age, that application documentation authors
begin to catch up.
George
From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Gerry Onischak
Sent: 05 March 2020 17:19
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [program-l] Dante, an accessibility issue in Visual
Studio 2019 that has been overlooked.
Hello Dante,
First off, I would like to congratulate you and your team on all of the
improvements that you have made to Visual Studio 2019. Unfortunately, you
guys have missed a major accessibility issue with Visual Studio 2019 as well
as many other programs that Microsoft has produced over the years. I am a
retired blind social worker who is trying to learn how to use Visual Studio
so that I can pursue my interest in becoming proficient in a contemporary
computer programming language.
The accessibility issue that I am referring to is the lack of an accessible
tutorial on how to begin using Visual Studio from a blind person's
perspective. All of the tutorials that I found on the web including many
produced by Microsoft over the years, present the information needed from a
visual perspective, i.e. the screen. None of these tutorials, particularly
in this case Visual Studio 2019, present any material from the perspective
of a keyboard -only user who is relying on working with only the shortcut
keys to manipulate Visual Studio. All of the tutorials that I've looked at
present critical information, and describe necessary concepts, about
programming either in a given language or in this case Visual Studio with
embedded screenshots. Screenshots are a graphical representation of text
they are not text format in of themselves. JAWS, and I suspect Narrator, may
have a similar difficulty although I'm not a narrator user. The screen
readers cannot read or present a translation of what this graphical
information is. In short, embedded screenshots are totally useless as well
as extremely frustrating to encounter.
In order to make Visual Studio 2019 totally accessible to blind and visually
impaired users, your team should devote some time to developing a series of
text baste tutorials that describe the various features of Visual Studio
2019 from a blind perspective. By this, I mean describing how to work
effectively and to efficiently manipulate Visual Studio, with only the use
of keyboard shortcuts. These tutorials should never rely on screenshots or
other graphical representations to describe how to use a given feature in
Visual Studio or a related computer language.
