I am increasingly finding cases where Firefox either sees things or does
things that Chrome doesn’t when used with NVDA. I don’t use JAWS and my
demo is far too old to evaluate whether the same things occur. But I think
the question of whether Chrome-based browsers are working properly with
sites in terms of accessibility should be systematically addressed.

Here are two examples:
First is this article from The New York Times;.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/15/us/rittenhouse-trial-closing-arguments.html
If you are at the top of the page and press s to move by separator, you will
immediately move to cards giving background information on the story.
In Firefox, you see, at the end of the card, a button for previous card,
unavailable since you are on the first card, and a button for next card.
Activating this button works. It moves you to the next card.
To easily get to this card in a proper position to read it, press page up,
then s for separator.
The previous and next card buttons both work correctly for this card and, I
assume, for all other cards.

I tested with Chrome and Brave and neither of these Chrome-based browsers
saw either button. I could read the first card below the separator but no
buttons are displayed.

I’ve recently been looking up material on occasion using the Encyclopedia
Britannica online. When reading with Firefox, the page being read
automatically shows new material as you move down it. Firefox shows this
new material when it appears. Chrome-based browsers don’t.
This article is an example:
https://www.britannica.com/art/television-in-the-United-States/The-late-Golden-Age

Search from the top of the page for the word nervous. If you down arrow in
Firefox, the text continues after some items, perhaps three or four.
Chrome-based browsers don’t load new material at least not accessibly to
screen-readers.

Chrome-based browsers don’t see comments on Youtube pages where videos are
streamed. Firefox does. Because the page changes as you move down it, you
have to move down the page to see the comments. You can’t just search for
the word comment to get to the section.

I’ll add that all these comments are for my specific machine but I expect
they will be generally experienced. Verification, however, is necessary.

Are these problems with Chrome, with NVDA, or both? I suspect that these
problems are not improper implementation of accessibility. Those questions,
however, would require technically knowledgeable investigation to be
resolved.

Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: Gene
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2021 11:00 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] NVDA's handling of checkboxes especially in Google
Chrome

Since Firefox sees the checkboxes, I don’t know that its valid to assume
what the problem is and that it is improper design. Also, there may be
cases where you will hear explanatory text that accompanies a structure read
if you tab into the structure rather than move to it in some other way. I
haven’t compared Chrome-based and not Chrome-based browsers in these cases
but again, is this improper design or just the complexity of design?

Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: Jackie
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2021 10:55 AM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] NVDA's handling of checkboxes especially in Google
Chrome

Yeah well, I'm not trying to be obscene here, but it's because the web
designers didn't use checkboxes that expose themselves, or, perhaps to
put it just a bit more succinctly, expose their state. & it is a royal
pita, & it's not unique to NVDA, though having said thus, sometimes
Jaws actually allows labeling of these graphics, whereas NVDA doesn't.
& it's not an issue specific to Chrome, either. It's actually called a
"clickable element" as opposed to a checkbox. Sighted folks generally
cant distinguish these from standard checkboxes, but they sure create
problems for us.

On 11/15/21, Tyler Zahnke <programmer651@...> wrote:

Hello NVDA community! Why does NVDA not read some checkboxes in Google
Chrome? NVDA reads a lot of them, but some sites have a "remember me"
checkbox on their login screen that just says "clickable"; when you
press Enter where it says clickable, the box checks, but NVDA doesn't
tell you this. I have seen websites that contain both accessible and
inaccessible checkboxes, why is this? And several times (I have a
memory of seeing this on the login screen of Palai), it doesn't read
some of the checkboxes, such as "remember me", at all. It actually got
to the point where I thought they had removed the checkbox from their
site because it completely didn't read it, but users of other devices
claimed they still saw the checkbox, but several of us Chrome and NVDA
users noticed the missing checkbox. And as soon as I tried the same
site with Firefox and NVDA, I saw the checkbox, but it said "remember
me clickable" and therefore, though you could check and uncheck it,
NVDA wouldn't tell you, while on Chrome, NVDA skips over the box. This
was a problem with a website that I actually had to help out as far as
accessibility; their site had some regular checkboxes on the form and
screen readers could read it just fine, but then some checkboxes said
"clickable" or didn't say anything at all, yet the Enter key worked on
them but the screen reader didn't say. I've probably seen variations
on this issue for a few years, some checkbox not displaying in Chrome.
Often I would try it again with Firefox, and at least in the
checkbox-related cases, it usually worked. And in the case of the
website I helped make accessible, I even looked at the HTML for the
checkboxes, and even the inaccessible checkboxes were still coded like
checkboxes though they may have had some extra styling on them. So
what's the deal with checkboxes?

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