You're absolutely correct, Gerry. To be completely honest, I don't have the
highest confidence that the tutorials we have are great for **Sighted** users
to be able to learn Visual Studio and get started... let alone folks who rely
on screen readers.
I feel like it's a particularly valuable operation to go through, especially as
we start transitioning from merely being compliant/compatible to being
genuinely useful. If teams are required to write their tutorials from multiple
perspectives, it would certainly build that empathy. The first time a Program
Manager (like myself) has to walk through a tutorial with a screen reader and
keyboard and realizes just how certain activities are particularly
irritating... it may help.
The challenge though is finding folks who can help us. I took a VERY
introductory course on JAWS and I'm not even going to pretend that I have any
level of proficiency with it. I'm concerned that if *I* were to write a
tutorial, the proficient screen reader users are going to be grinding their
teeth screaming "NO! NO! There are much better ways to do that".
Although, to be fair, a tutorial that explains the process from a novice level
would still be better than no tutorial at all.
I am really encouraging the other folks I work with to write blog posts and
tutorials that keep the screen reader in mind, but I will absolutely bring your
points to the table with my colleagues.
--D
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
________________________________
From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf
of Gerry Onischak <Gerry.Onischak@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 9:18 AM
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <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.
