Hello,
I am contacting the forum with the intent of obtaining some advice or guidance regarding a matter of accessibility for Screen Reader applications with the PureCloud platform.
I am not a developer, however, am rather familiar with requirements for accessibility for screen reader applications as I am blind/visually impaired and use screen reader software for access and employment.
I do have some experience with HTML and scripting and would like to provide more constructive information to my own IT department regarding the PureCloud interface so that I can use it more effectively.
I will be using PureCloud with a screen reader application called Jaws for Windows from http://www.freedomscientific.com/ and am encountering some difficulty regarding identification of controls in the web interface. The primary function of a screen reader is to provide spoken output from a computer and to emulate mouse functions to provide access to modern applications. The software I use interfaces with browsers (such as Chrome) through API’s to obtain the content being displayed as what it calls a document object model. It then presents this information to me in its own “virtual buffer” where I can use the keyboard to interact with it. For example, pressing the enter key on a link will normally simulate a mouse-click action on that item. This also allows me the ability to text-search the content for keywords, assign what it calls place-markers to instantly map parts of a web interface to keyboard commands or perform other scripting functions for which it has its own scripting language, somewhat similar to VBScript and C++.
The primary accessibility issue that I have noticed with PureCloud and screen readers is the lack of accessibility tags or labels for most of the HTML elements. For example, the controls below the user’s options of logging in and out such as favorites, chat, phone, video phone and so on are unlabeled. My screen reader identifies each as a hyper-link with the pound or # symbol. The only control which appears to have a label in this group is “Toggle ACD Interactions Panel”. Furthermore, most of the buttons throughout the chat screens and the phone are unlabeled, meaning that my software cannot inform me what each button is for. The only exception to most of these appears to be the numbers on the Dialpad.
While this is not an extensive list, I hope that my examples provided illustrate the issue and provide useful information regarding which controls are useable as they are, and which controls are not. In most cases, such labels can be simply assigned by inserting an accessibility tag into the appropriate HTML element for each control respectively.
While my software does have a custom-labeling function, it is ineffective on the controls that are links as they all appear to it as the same and therefore any label assigned to one of such controls applies to all of them identically.
I can memorize the order of controls and the software is technically useable in this fashion, however it is not ideal, and I would not classify the PureCloud software as accessible or in conformance with modern web-accessibility standards at this time.
That being said, with accessibility labels assigned to the links and controls, the situation would be much improved. If responsibility for the labeling of such controls falls to the individual clients using the software, I am hopeful that someone can direct me to provide constructive information on how this can be done to my employers own developers, or if this responsibility falls to Genesys to implement in a future software update for PureCloud overall, that this can be escalated to the appropriate party for review.
Please advise if there is any further information that any can provide. We begin use of this software rather imminently so any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Regards,