Improved screen reader accessibility for approval voting

[Marie Nordin]

Greetings, OpaVote team!

I work at the Python Software Foundation [0] and one of my responsibilities is to coordinate our annual Board election. Our election is an approval vote and we have used OpaVote for a couple of years to run these elections in the June-August time frame. While OpaVote has been a great improvement over our last service, we are still receiving some calls from our community to improve the accessibility of the election, specifically in the way of screen readers.

As I researched these requests, I found that your team is open to making targeted accessibility improvements [1] if we can pinpoint the issues we are running into. Along those lines, one of our Board members who is well versed in A11y best practices and user testing performed and documented an accessibility review [2]. The review includes details on the issues, the criteria used to test, and links to resources to aid implementation of updates.

We kindly ask that you check our accessibility review and determine if any of the prescribed improvements are possible. We are happy to provide more info on our use case, answer any questions, or help test any updates your team is able to make. We definitely want to continue using OpaVote for our election and we're hoping that our request will improve the user experience for all of your users!

Please let me know if you need anything from me :)

Best,

Marie

[0] https://www.python.org/psf-landing/

[1] https://groups.google.com/g/opavote-support/c/eQ3hRZLwGU4

[2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/154-7oPilI8wyiqn-A6NEDZvaU_ojfgwBJlfz-Yx7Nl8/edit?usp=sharing

[Team OpaVote]

Hello Marie,

This is a great accessibility review and it is greatly appreciated. We do intend to make these improvements and more, until OpaVote is fully accessible. Unfortunately, due to our limited resources I cannot say when we will be able to complete that project.

It is helpful to know which improvements have the greatest impact, so that we can potentially deliver those first. Judging from the survey it sounds like we should focus on the voting page first and specifically navigation and interactive elements on that page. Is that correct?

Best,
-- Damien
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com

{#HS:2903238228-294#}

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[Tania Allard]

Hi all

To provide a bit more context, since we did not have an ongoing election, I used the demonstration page of your site, so I assumed the interactions present there would be the same in any election using those components.  I would recommend:

1. Start with the "components or patterns" (I am unsure how these are implemented) used for voting. -> I guess this is what you meant by focusing on the voting page.

2. Focus on navigation first since, as mentioned in the audit, most assistive technologies "navigate" content, so remediating this first would address several issues out of the box. 

3. We (the PSF) would particularly benefit from improving the accessibility of checkbox voting, as that's what we use for our elections. Other components in OpaVote are at least focusable/somewhat navigable, but checkboxes are not at all, so this would rank them higher on the need for remediation. (Followed by listboxes. Listboxes are used for several voting types like ranked vote and condorcet. However, I did not spend much time testing this component.)

A good starting point for this remediation would be to follow the guidelines/implementation details in the Checkbox ARIA pattern documentation (https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/checkbox/examples/checkbox/). 

For the listbox component, I have the feeling this ARIA patterns guideline would be a good starting point but I did not test this as thoroughly as I did with the checkboxes so take this with a grain of salt  https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/listbox/examples/listbox-rearrangeable/

I hope this is helpful to you. I am also unfamiliar with how OpaVote is developed, but I can help with a handful of hours for code reviews.

Best,

[Team OpaVote]

Thank you, Tania.

We will use this information to help us as we make the app more accessible.

Best,
-- Damien
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com

{#HS:2903238228-294#}

On Fri, Apr 11, 2025 at 9:41 PM UTC, Tania Allard <tal...@quansight.com> wrote:

Hi all

To provide a bit more context, since we did not have an ongoing election, I used the demonstration page of your site, so I assumed the interactions present there would be the same in any election using those components. I would recommend:
1. Start with the "components or patterns" (I am unsure how these are implemented) used for voting. -> I guess this is what you meant by focusing on the voting page.
2. Focus on navigation first since, as mentioned in the audit, most assistive technologies "navigate" content, so remediating this first would address several issues out of the box.
3. We (the PSF) would particularly benefit from improving the accessibility of checkbox voting, as that's what we use for our elections. Other components in OpaVote are at least focusable/somewhat navigable, but checkboxes are not at all, so this would rank them higher on the need for remediation. (Followed by listboxes. Listboxes are used for several voting types like ranked vote and condorcet. However, I did not spend much time testing this component.)

A good starting point for this remediation would be to follow the guidelines/implementation details in the Checkbox ARIA pattern documentation (https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/checkbox/examples/checkbox/).

For the listbox component, I have the feeling this ARIA patterns guideline would be a good starting point but I did not test this as thoroughly as I did with the checkboxes so take this with a grain of salt https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/listbox/examples/listbox-rearrangeable/

I hope this is helpful to you. I am also unfamiliar with how OpaVote is developed, but I can help with a handful of hours for code reviews.

Best,

On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 11:10 PM UTC, Team OpaVote <te...@opavote.com> wrote:

Hello Marie,

This is a great accessibility review and it is greatly appreciated. We do intend to make these improvements and more, until OpaVote is fully accessible. Unfortunately, due to our limited resources I cannot say when we will be able to complete that project.

It is helpful to know which improvements have the greatest impact, so that we can potentially deliver those first. Judging from the survey it sounds like we should focus on the voting page first and specifically navigation and interactive elements on that page. Is that correct?

Best,
-- Damien
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com

[Marie Nordin]

Hiya Damien,

As we continue to coordinate our upcoming 2025 election, we wanted to check back in with the OpaVote team. I saw you mentioned limited resources restricting your ability to say when the updates we are requesting could be implemented, which we totally understand as a staff of 13 and a board of 12 people :)

Still, we are curious if this work would be tackled soon, or even in the next two years. It's important for the PSF to be responsive to our communities request for increased accessibility for our election, and if it's out of scope for your team for years to come, we may need to look into other options for future elections. I will note that Tania offered code reviews, if that would make any difference in your teams ability to take this work on soon.

We appreciate your time in looking into and responding to our inquiry.

Best wishes,

Marie

[Team OpaVote]

Hi Marie,

I can't tell you when we will be able to offer a more accessible voting page. We simply cannot know when it will be ready.

I can tell you that the work has already begun and we just allocated more resources to speed up the process. If the need arises, would you or Tania be available for beta testing or a pre-deployment accessibility review?

Best,
-- Damien
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com

{#HS:2903238228-294#}

On Tue, May 6, 2025 at 6:41 PM UTC, Marie Nordin <marie....@pyfound.org> wrote:

Hiya Damien,

As we continue to coordinate our upcoming 2025 election, we wanted to check back in with the OpaVote team. I saw you mentioned limited resources restricting your ability to say when the updates we are requesting could be implemented, which we totally understand as a staff of 13 and a board of 12 people :)

Still, we are curious if this work would be tackled soon, or even in the next two years. It's important for the PSF to be responsive to our communities request for increased accessibility for our election, and if it's out of scope for your team for years to come, we may need to look into other options for future elections. I will note that Tania offered code reviews, if that would make any difference in your teams ability to take this work on soon.

We appreciate your time in looking into and responding to our inquiry.

Best wishes,
Marie

On Sun, Apr 13, 2025 at 1:42 AM UTC, Team OpaVote <te...@opavote.com> wrote:

Thank you, Tania.

We will use this information to help us as we make the app more accessible.

Best,
-- Damien
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com

[Tania Allard]

Hi there

I can certainly make myself available for beta-testing and/or a follow-up review.
Also, like Marie said, I can make myself available for some code reviews if that is useful (I do not know how development works for this project, but I am happy to help).

Also:

I can't tell you when we will be able to offer a more accessible voting page. We simply cannot know when it will be ready.

I want to reassure you that small iterative improvements towards better accessibility are good. I know it can be a lot of work, and it can feel like everything should be done at once (I spend a lot of time working on accessibility audits/improvements, so I am sympathetic with this), but small progress is good progress, even if it is one component at a time.

Please don't hesitate to ask any questions; I would be more than happy to help however I can.

Best,

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Tania Allard, PhD (she/her) Director, Quansight Labs Quansight | Sustaining open source communities w: labs.quansight.org e: tal...@quansight.com

My working hours might differ from yours; I have no expectations of receiving a reply outside your core working schedule.

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[Team OpaVote]

Thank you, Tania. I will make sure to reach out if the need arises.

Best,
-- Damien
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com

{#HS:2903238228-294#}

On Thu, May 8, 2025 at 10:35 AM UTC, Tania Allard <tal...@quansight.com> wrote:

Hi there

I can certainly make myself available for beta-testing and/or a follow-up
review.
Also, like Marie said, I can make myself available for some code reviews if
that is useful (I do not know how development works for this project, but I
am happy to help).

Also:

I can't tell you when we will be able to offer a more accessible voting
> page. We simply cannot know when it will be ready.


I want to reassure you that small iterative improvements towards better
accessibility are good. I know it can be a lot of work, and it can feel
like everything should be done at once (I spend a lot of time working on
accessibility audits/improvements, so I am sympathetic with this), but
small progress is good progress, even if it is one component at a time.
Please don't hesitate to ask any questions; I would be more than happy to
help however I can.

Best,

On Thu, 8 May 2025 at 00:51, 'Team OpaVote' via OpaVote Support Forum <

On Wed, May 7, 2025 at 11:51 PM UTC, Team OpaVote <te...@opavote.com> wrote:

Hi Marie,

I can't tell you when we will be able to offer a more accessible voting page. We simply cannot know when it will be ready.

I can tell you that the work has already begun and we just allocated more resources to speed up the process. If the need arises, would you or Tania be available for beta testing or a pre-deployment accessibility review?

Best,
-- Damien
Team OpaVote
https://opavote.com

[Marie Nordin]

Hi Damien & OpaVote team,

Our PSF Board election is coming up quickly (September 2-16th). We wanted to check in with your team to see if you've had the chance to progress on any of the a11y recommendations we worked up. No problem if not, we understand that your team is working with limited resources. Our community may ask if we've worked on this as well, so we want to be ready to share about any updates that may have been made. 

Thank you!

Marie

--

Marie Nordin

Community Communications Manager

Python Software Foundation

she/her