Hi, I am totally blind and I use a screen reader. I probably should mention that my day job involves helping project teams at my company with making digital content accessible.
I am wondering if there is an optimal way you would like accessibility related feedback? For example, I plan on going through all the compendium content to suggest if there is anything that might further improve the accessibility of the content. I am willing to make suggestions both on what might be useful to improve the accessibility of the content further as well as suggest options for approaching the problems--when I have any thoughts on that. I could try to identify specific things on specific pages. I could also look through the content and just create a list of suggestions that apply to content across all the pages. Or maybe you prefer something else? I am really excited about your work and I am hoping you might be able to do some things that might make this a good way for my friends and myself to game together. Thanks!
I honestly think this thread would be the best place for you to post your accessibility feedback. :) Staff is here often, so I'm sure they'll be happy to hear how they can make the site more accessible.
Hey my Mother in law is Blind as well and i was wondering how the site word for you. I have been talking to her about it and if this site will work well for her this might solve some of or issues with content restriction for her. Since no Official PDF's exist.
Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to devote to looking through all the content provided. I think some of it is accessible using a screen reader. I have also run into one or two things that were less accessible but really haven't had time to provide feedback on it. I would suggest having her try to use this content and see how it works for her. One thing to keep in mind is that the content here is still limited so she won't have access yet to everything that is available via books.
I understand the limitation of the current available content, and i have told her to join but she is procrastinating. So and feed back you do post i will relay in hope to entice her to join more. And thanks for what feedback you have already given.
Thanks for your feedback. I know there are other blind gamers out there who want to be able to use this material so they can play 5e. However, "knowing that" and hearing from people who either directly benefit from that or have family and friends who will is "helpful", "re-energizing", "refreshing"? I am not sure what the right word is. I should start posting some feedback in the next few days. At the moment, I am trying to figure out the best way to post the feedback to make it as easy to use and understand for those people who will end up having to figure out how to apply it to this content.
While I am not blind, one of my dear gamer friends is blind and I, also, work on digital content accessibility in my "day job." I think I may know this Barley fellow... At any rate, I'm also happy to provide feedback.
I've just begun playing with phases 2 and 3 and there are numerous places across the site where improvements could be made. Most of what I see so far involve just HTML changes. However, while I work on more detailed feedback, I did just find some fairly big blockers your developers should be aware of:
The character creation process is not completely keyboard accessible. The modal dialogs are especially problematic. You cannot use the arrow keys to scroll up and down (it scrolls the main page in the background instead). And the various toggles for more/less content are not in the tab order. They appear to be <div> elements with script looking for a mouseclick. These should be something that can be used via keyboard such as an anchor, <a>.
There are various links that have no accessible name such as the social media links. It looks like they are using background images to provide the icons but they need a name for a screen reader to announce.There are multiple fixes including aria-label or title attributes added to the anchors or you can create a <span> with the text and use CSS Clip Method to hide it visually (preferred). Any anchors done this way need fixing.
The Search field also has no label except the placeholder text. Visual <label> elements associated with the <input> elements are preferred. At least, though, use an aria-label on the <input> if visual labels are just a "no go."
When I was testing with a screen reader I did find especially in the main menus around my ID/account that I could hear links I could not see on the screen. I presume these are things that are hidden visually but the screen reader is still finding. Anything you want to hide visually can usually be done by using the CSS property display:none and screen readers usually respect that and ignore the content. But, sometimes it is necessary to go a step further and add aria-hidden="true" to the elements or the container of the elements you want to hide. The script that does the hiding and showing can insert the aria attribute and then remove it when the content is visible.
My automated tool testing picked up that pinch to zoom functionality is suppressed. This is not something that should be done because it prevents mobile device users from zooming the contents in order to see it better.
I would ask developers and testers to simply try to use everything keyboard only with no mouse. If you cannot access all the content by TABBING around and using the Enter key on links and menus and Enter or Spacebar on buttons, it needs fixing. This is a simple way to test and debug very basic accessibility problems. You can, also, run various automated accessibility checkers which abound online. Some examples include the WAVE tool from WebAIM and the AXE browser plug-in from Deque. There are many others. These will not find every accessibility defect but they will cover the basics and give you sort of a good baseline for accessibility. I did some quick testing with tools like these and I can write up some reports based on their findings at a later date. But your developers and testers can do this themselves very easily. These tools are free by the way.
If possible, your testers could download the free Windows desktop screen reader, NVDA, although a donation to their organization is appreciated. NVDA works very well with Firefox and you can find tutorials online on how to do very basic testing with the screen reader.In addition, mobile devices usually have their own screen reader built-in: Talkback on Android devices and Voiceover on iOS devices. They are built-in and they are free. I'd be willing to tutor on screen readers as well.
There is work to be done but none of it looks terribly difficult so far. I think, right now, Phase 1 is fairly accessible to screen readers.I don't know if there is anyone there charged with making sure things are accessible or if there is a lead developer I could communicate directly with but I would be happy to do so if you want to point them in my direction. I have been playing some form of D&D since 1981 and I think it's important that all digital content, especially content like this, be accessible to anyone who wants to use it matter what their disabilities. Role-playing games do not require sight to play. Anything I can do to ensure that gamers with disabilities can participate at the D&D table, I am happy to do.
Hi, I'm blind as well and wanted to give my own feedback. I haven't used the site or much more than character creation, but I've come across a few problems. I have enough residual vision to find the character creation link. I haven't tried using just keyboard commands, but since the link is labeled I don't think it would be much of an issue. My problem comes when I try to choose race or class. As soon as one of the windows pops up to give more information my screen reader stops working on the page. It doesn't loose focus because refocusing on the page doesn't do anything. It completely stops working on the page. I can't get any further in the process because of this.
Hi, there. I do accessibility testing as a freelancer and for a Fortune 50. I am curious if you've tried this with any other browsers such as the latest Firefox or Edge? In my experience testing, Chrome and NVDA do not always play well together. I will, also, try to find some time today to test myself. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you like as well, jestercmk@gmail.com. One of my colleagues and gamer buds is blind and a JAWS and NVDA users. I can put you in touch with him, also, if you like.
To the mods: there are several of us willing to help improve the accessibility of D&D Beyond for little or no pay. Point us to the right people!
Hi. Thanks for the suggestions. Firefox had a tendency to crash on my old computer if I wanted to use my screen reader and I haven't gotten back into the habit of using it yet. I'm going to test the character builder with it soon. In the meantime there are a few other things that I have noticed. If I start on the home page instead of searching for it, the character builder is very hard to find just using NVDA and not my residual vision. This is mostly because I have to wade through several links to find it, and doing a search on the page doesn't work as I can't get my screen reader to focus back on the page. The good news is I can click the link once I find it even though I think it's in a menu. I also notice there is no "Skip/Jump to Content" link which means that every time I go to a new page I have to tab through the menus at the top of the page to get to the things I want to read. (Maybe NVDA has a way to get past this, but I haven't found it yet.)
I agree with what was said above about the character sheet. The font size is small, there is little contrast which seems to be true of most of the website, and the layout is difficult to navigate with a magnifier. I will be testing my screen reader's functionality with the character sheet when I test the character builder with Firefox.
I hope this feedback is useful to someone. I will post more when I've explored the character creator and the site a bit more.
My Day job is doing accessibility testing and advice for a large organisation. Has anyone looked at the new character sheet? I thought it was a bit of mess ... Also I think the addition of a jump to content hidden link would make navigation easier. I have been looking with various screen readers and Dictation software. I am using Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari on my browser.
I am dyslexic so make extensive use of text to speech to support my access to longer prose pieces.
Also bumping this to see if anyone else has anything to add?
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Hi, I am totally blind and I use a screen reader. I probably should mention that my day job involves helping project teams at my company with making digital content accessible.
I am wondering if there is an optimal way you would like accessibility related feedback? For example, I plan on going through all the compendium content to suggest if there is anything that might further improve the accessibility of the content. I am willing to make suggestions both on what might be useful to improve the accessibility of the content further as well as suggest options for approaching the problems--when I have any thoughts on that. I could try to identify specific things on specific pages. I could also look through the content and just create a list of suggestions that apply to content across all the pages. Or maybe you prefer something else? I am really excited about your work and I am hoping you might be able to do some things that might make this a good way for my friends and myself to game together. Thanks!
I honestly think this thread would be the best place for you to post your accessibility feedback. :) Staff is here often, so I'm sure they'll be happy to hear how they can make the site more accessible.
Thanks!
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Hey my Mother in law is Blind as well and i was wondering how the site word for you. I have been talking to her about it and if this site will work well for her this might solve some of or issues with content restriction for her. Since no Official PDF's exist.
Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to devote to looking through all the content provided. I think some of it is accessible using a screen reader. I have also run into one or two things that were less accessible but really haven't had time to provide feedback on it. I would suggest having her try to use this content and see how it works for her. One thing to keep in mind is that the content here is still limited so she won't have access yet to everything that is available via books.
I understand the limitation of the current available content, and i have told her to join but she is procrastinating. So and feed back you do post i will relay in hope to entice her to join more. And thanks for what feedback you have already given.
Thanks for your feedback. I know there are other blind gamers out there who want to be able to use this material so they can play 5e. However, "knowing that" and hearing from people who either directly benefit from that or have family and friends who will is "helpful", "re-energizing", "refreshing"? I am not sure what the right word is.
I should start posting some feedback in the next few days. At the moment, I am trying to figure out the best way to post the feedback to make it as easy to use and understand for those people who will end up having to figure out how to apply it to this content.
While I am not blind, one of my dear gamer friends is blind and I, also, work on digital content accessibility in my "day job." I think I may know this Barley fellow... At any rate, I'm also happy to provide feedback.
I've just begun playing with phases 2 and 3 and there are numerous places across the site where improvements could be made. Most of what I see so far involve just HTML changes. However, while I work on more detailed feedback, I did just find some fairly big blockers your developers should be aware of:
I would ask developers and testers to simply try to use everything keyboard only with no mouse. If you cannot access all the content by TABBING around and using the Enter key on links and menus and Enter or Spacebar on buttons, it needs fixing. This is a simple way to test and debug very basic accessibility problems. You can, also, run various automated accessibility checkers which abound online. Some examples include the WAVE tool from WebAIM and the AXE browser plug-in from Deque. There are many others. These will not find every accessibility defect but they will cover the basics and give you sort of a good baseline for accessibility. I did some quick testing with tools like these and I can write up some reports based on their findings at a later date. But your developers and testers can do this themselves very easily. These tools are free by the way.
If possible, your testers could download the free Windows desktop screen reader, NVDA, although a donation to their organization is appreciated. NVDA works very well with Firefox and you can find tutorials online on how to do very basic testing with the screen reader.In addition, mobile devices usually have their own screen reader built-in: Talkback on Android devices and Voiceover on iOS devices. They are built-in and they are free. I'd be willing to tutor on screen readers as well.
There is work to be done but none of it looks terribly difficult so far. I think, right now, Phase 1 is fairly accessible to screen readers.I don't know if there is anyone there charged with making sure things are accessible or if there is a lead developer I could communicate directly with but I would be happy to do so if you want to point them in my direction. I have been playing some form of D&D since 1981 and I think it's important that all digital content, especially content like this, be accessible to anyone who wants to use it matter what their disabilities. Role-playing games do not require sight to play. Anything I can do to ensure that gamers with disabilities can participate at the D&D table, I am happy to do.
Chris
I have to say I am a bit disappointed to see no official acknowledgement or response to the initial feedback we've reported on accessibility.
@GimpyDaddy thought youd be interested in the reply I got on twitter: https://twitter.com/DnDBeyond/status/897864905310838785
Hi, I'm blind as well and wanted to give my own feedback. I haven't used the site or much more than character creation, but I've come across a few problems. I have enough residual vision to find the character creation link. I haven't tried using just keyboard commands, but since the link is labeled I don't think it would be much of an issue. My problem comes when I try to choose race or class. As soon as one of the windows pops up to give more information my screen reader stops working on the page. It doesn't loose focus because refocusing on the page doesn't do anything. It completely stops working on the page. I can't get any further in the process because of this.
I am using Chrome and my screen reader is NVDA
Hi, there. I do accessibility testing as a freelancer and for a Fortune 50. I am curious if you've tried this with any other browsers such as the latest Firefox or Edge? In my experience testing, Chrome and NVDA do not always play well together. I will, also, try to find some time today to test myself. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you like as well, jestercmk@gmail.com. One of my colleagues and gamer buds is blind and a JAWS and NVDA users. I can put you in touch with him, also, if you like.
To the mods: there are several of us willing to help improve the accessibility of D&D Beyond for little or no pay. Point us to the right people!
Hi. Thanks for the suggestions. Firefox had a tendency to crash on my old computer if I wanted to use my screen reader and I haven't gotten back into the habit of using it yet. I'm going to test the character builder with it soon. In the meantime there are a few other things that I have noticed. If I start on the home page instead of searching for it, the character builder is very hard to find just using NVDA and not my residual vision. This is mostly because I have to wade through several links to find it, and doing a search on the page doesn't work as I can't get my screen reader to focus back on the page. The good news is I can click the link once I find it even though I think it's in a menu. I also notice there is no "Skip/Jump to Content" link which means that every time I go to a new page I have to tab through the menus at the top of the page to get to the things I want to read. (Maybe NVDA has a way to get past this, but I haven't found it yet.)
I agree with what was said above about the character sheet. The font size is small, there is little contrast which seems to be true of most of the website, and the layout is difficult to navigate with a magnifier. I will be testing my screen reader's functionality with the character sheet when I test the character builder with Firefox.
I hope this feedback is useful to someone. I will post more when I've explored the character creator and the site a bit more.
My Day job is doing accessibility testing and advice for a large organisation. Has anyone looked at the new character sheet? I thought it was a bit of mess ... Also I think the addition of a jump to content hidden link would make navigation easier. I have been looking with various screen readers and Dictation software. I am using Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari on my browser.
I am dyslexic so make extensive use of text to speech to support my access to longer prose pieces.
Also bumping this to see if anyone else has anything to add?