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Screen reader can't read translations and declensions on English Wiktionary
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Description

originally reported here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Project:Support_desk/Site_accessibility_for_blinds

<quote>
"Site accessibility for blinds"

Dear Wiktionary team, I am a blind, and therefore a screen reader software user. I am also a student of Foreign Languages. I have successfully used Wictionary until few months ago. Today, when I came back to the site, because I started preparing for the beginning of University in two weeks, I discovered that I can no longer access the contents I used to. More specifically, when I enter an English word, I cannot read its translation in other languages. And when I enter a Polish word, I can no longer see the declentions of that word. When I realized it, I just felt like crying. Being blind, I cannot use paper printed dictionaries. Digital solutions are the answer for blinds need of autonomy. And when I see that improvements on the website just completely disregard the accessibility issue, it is just so sad. Anyway, I assume that it happened simply because the tecnicians who care for the website are not aware of the disabled needs. So that's why I am writing, to ask that please, please, please, you consider removing whatever aditions you made to Wiktionary that made it impossible to use by screen reader software users. In case you want or need to contact me, for further clarifications or comments, please do it to the e-mail address catia.b.lima(put-the-at-sign-here)gmail.com. I am afraid I won't be able to retrieve this discussion anymore, due to the complexity of the pages, so I will most likely not read whatever you tell me here. Once more, please, University is starting in two weeks and I needed to study before that. Thank you for your time and your commitment to help me and other blinds. Kidest regards, Catia - 15 September 2013
</quote>

<quote>
There are two problems:

The screenreader can no longer read translations and
The screenreader can no longer read declensions.

Does anyone know, why?
</quote>

  • please help finding out if this just applies to Wiktionary or is a global issue
  • what is the root cause and of course fix it

Version: wmf-deployment
Severity: major

Details

Reference
bz54174

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to High.Nov 22 2014, 1:50 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz54174.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

The JS-based collapsing of those sections could be an issue. OTOH that does not look new in http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js.

CC'ing Hoo man: Could you take a look at this?

I took a brief look at various templates and JavaScript, but I couldn't find anything related that changed recently. Sadly I don't have my secondary machine with me this week, so I can't do any screen reader testing.
It would be great if we could get further details from the reporting user. Sadly I can't CC her here, as she doesn't have an account :/

(In reply to comment #4)

It would be great if we could get further details from the reporting user.
Sadly I can't CC her here, as she doesn't have an account :/

I can get them (she speaks Italian, btw). What do you need?

(In reply to comment #5)

(In reply to comment #4)

It would be great if we could get further details from the reporting user.
Sadly I can't CC her here, as she doesn't have an account :/

I can get them (she speaks Italian, btw). What do you need?

That's a rather good question... probably what her screen reader used to read to her in comparison to what it says now. Maybe this: https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?diff=23044480&oldid=22915160 already fixed it? The grease pit suggests that.

On Thu, 2013-09-19, Cátia Lima wrote:

are you sure that nobody has done anything? I have been trying
en.wiktionary.org everyday, since I first posted my problem last Sunday, and
today, for the first time, it is working!

Looks like comment 6 might be correct, refering to the discussion in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2013/September#Site_accessibility_for_blinds

Closing as WORKSFORME for the time being as nobody can reproduce the problem anymore. Thanks everybody for your help to track this down!