Accessibility improvements in Chrome 27

[Dominic Mazzoni]

Here are some of the accessibility improvements in Chrome 27, which is in Canary and Dev channel now.

First, you should find this is the fastest version yet when used with any assistive technology. You should notice the difference on some large and complicated pages.

Second, a number of top-voted issues have finally been resolved, including:

* Same-page links work correctly on Windows screen readers.

* Issues with JAWS placemarkers have been resolved, they now work great.

* Selecting text and copying it copies any Alt text as well.

* On Windows, Alt+DownArrow opens a combo box.

Last, we're introducing a new feature for web developers that lets you explore Chrome's accessibility internals and help diagnose accessibility problems: just type chrome://accessibility into your address bar. 

- Dominic

[Dominic Mazzoni]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Ryan E. Benson <ryan....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Dominic. I have an implementation question. Why did the team choose to use alt+Down-Arrow versus F4? F4 has been used in most browsers for years, so wouldn't it be a better practice to implement a feature that people expect to work?

F4 works too! I just mentioned Alt+DownArrow because that was the original bug report, but all of the keys that work in a native Windows combo box should work.

- Dominic

[Ryan E. Benson]

Thanks Dominic. I have an implementation question. Why did the team choose to use alt+Down-Arrow versus F4? F4 has been used in most browsers for years, so wouldn't it be a better practice to implement a feature that people expect to work?

--
Ryan E. Benson

[Ryan E. Benson]

That's good to hear!

--
Ryan E. Benson

[Mike Reiser]

Will these improvements impact NVDA users?

Mike

Sent from my iPhone

[Dominic Mazzoni]

Yes! All of these changes work in NVDA too, except for the bug fix for JAWS placemarkers, of course.

- Dominic