On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 12:01 PM, Gene wrote:

This is just the kind of thing you would expect to see implemented if a sighted person or persons, who know nothing about proper implementation of accessibility, add or design accessibility functions.  Just because something talks doesn't mean it is practical or properly usable.

And even if virtually all of the sighted developers actually have been trained extensively, or have long experience with, developing accessibility features there will always be the newbie who could slip.  And anyone who thinks that a piece of software as complex as Thunderbird undergoes testing of every line of code again, with human eyes and ears, at every update is deluding themselves.

On the topic on this group regarding Google Chrome Version 81, member Felix G. wrote, in part, "Broken PDF support for sighted users would never have slipped past
quality control, which pretty much informs us where we stand on the global scale of things."   And the fact is that small minorities, and blind users are a tiny, tiny, minority of users, will not be at the top of the list of concerns at all times.  And given that any software developer has many constituencies to please, focus on their primary constituency is appropriate.  When you add to that the fact that there are very, very few sighted people who have the vaguest clue regarding the actual nuts and bolts of daily use of screen readers in particular, it's entirely possible for things to slip through as the result of ignorance, not malice.  But the fact of the matter is that these days accessibility is, by and large, being designed in from the ground up, and that's a major, major change and step forward.  There will be occasional bugs that cause things to break, but here's the thing, that happens and happens to all users at some point or another.  The way to get these things addressed is to use the mechanism available for a given development team to report issues.  In the case of Thunderbird that's Bugzilla.  In the case of NVDA it's GitHub.  There are others.

I just assisted someone the other day in creating a Bugzilla account so that she could report some major accessibility issues, including this verbosity one, that showed up in the 70b3 beta of Thunderbird.  That's what has to be done.  And it's the individuals who encounter the issues who should be doing it.  And I am offering my assistance in helping anyone who wants to set up a bug reporting account for any given piece of software to do so, as well as figuring out the specific reporting process steps.  If you all don't do this then you have absolutely no right to expect anyone else will and, believe me, "someone else" won't.

 
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Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 1909, Build 18363  

Power is being told you're not loved and not being destroyed by it.

       ~ Madonna