Freesound Forums

1.
Looking over the BW with the ARC Toolkit, I see that a lot of the text contrast does not meet the WCAG requirement of at least 4.5 in color contrast between normal text and the background. This includes classes like:

You can find colors that have high enough contrast by using this contrast checker: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

2.
When you ask users to agree to cookies, it should be as easy to accept just the required cookies as it is to accept all cookies. I suggest adding another button to the cookie toast that allows the users to accept only the required cookies.

3.
The controls to play sound that are shown by hovering (bw-player-control-btn) do not show when navigating with the keyboard using tab.
Since they do not have titles (another WCAG requirement) they just show up as buttons when I test with VoiceOver (screen reader). In other words, a screen reader user won't know what the button is for.

4.
I would consider removing the image of the sound from screen readers, for example by keeping the alt-tag empty (https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/decorative/). However, since this would put the length of the sound and controllers before the title, I would also suggest putting the title, "5.
The links to the users which have posted the sounds are read twice by VoiceOver, probably because of the "::before".

::before
"derniers+sou..."

6.
Good job with the headings!

Last but not least: I like the new design! Good luck, and I'm looking forward to see how it goes!

/Astrid
UX designer

Hello to every one !

First of all, I should mention that I’m a blind user, and that I use an old computer with Win XP SP3, paired with Mozilla 52.9.0 32 bits, and a free open source screen reader called NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access)
So, please note that my comments and suggestions should be considered from the sight of people in my situation, with this old and basic configuration.

Even if the UI is usable (which is already nice), here are some problems I've listed :

1( the "three dots" menu in which you can find Tags, Random sound, Charts, Donate, Help, Switch to old UI only appears as an object that I can click, but without any title or label.

2) the account menu (in which you can find “Upload, Attribution, Bookmarks, Messages, View your profile, Account setting, Logout”) only displays the first letter of my profile (K for kevp88.

3) all the sound player transport buttons (probably play/pause, loop, and others) aren’t labelled. For me these are just buttons, without any name (whereas they were labelled properly in the old UI).

4) While adding this message, I realize that there is no check to confirm (or not) that I'll receive notifications when new posts will be added in this thread (whereas it was OK in the old UI).

Hope it could help !

Hi Norality, kevp888,

Thanks a lot for raising these issues. In fact, we have not checked BW yet for accessibility and I'm sure there'll be many things not working properly yet in that regard. We'll address the specific issues you mention and ask for further reviews so we can make new Freesound much more accessible. Thanks!

Hi Frederic !

Thank you very much !
Please feel free to keep us informed about the changes, so that we could provide feedback.

Keep in touch !

Hi friends !

Well, I’m afraid there are still some problems in terms of accessibility for blind users with that new UI, which would unfortunately make me think about leaving FS if not solved…
I must admit that, Both with my old PC using Firefox and with my recent android phone using Chrome, I can’t open the “menu” and “user menu”.
Furthermore, with my computer, I can’t play the sounds as the bottons don’t appear.
While with my mobile phone, I can’t upload any sound, as the “upload” botton doesn’t show (as well as “sounds”, “tags”,”forum”, “map”, and “donate”).
I think I’ve mentioned some of these problems already, and used the old UI until now, as it was really more usable for me.
Of course, if the new UI becomes the default one, I’ll have no choice. But so sad that I’d have to leave just because of that… 

Am I the only blind user experiencing these issues ?

Hope these problems could be solved !

Regards to all,

Kevin

Hi kevp888,

I thought these issues were fixed, but of course if they're not fixed we will fix them. The problem with accessibility development is that sometimes it is hard to replicate the environments and therefore hard for us to test. I followed the guidelines as much as I could, but I'm surely missing things in several places. I'll look into the specific issues that you're mentioning and let you know. These are probably related to software versions, but if with the old UI it was working for you, I should be able to make it work with the new one as well.

Hi Frederic !

Once more, thank you very much for your time and effort !
Yes, I can guess that fixing accessibility issues is a challenging task. And, I must admit that with my old computer, old firefox and NVDA screan reader, the problems mmight come from the outdated software versions too… But with my recent Android, using Chrome and the latest version of Google accessibility tools (talkback), I shouldn’t experience any problem, should I ?
Furthermore, as you mentioned, I have to say that I don’t experience such difficulties with the old UI, even with my old computer and softwares !
So, I sincerely hope you could fix these problems soon, or at least, let us access to the old UI as long as they’re not solved…

Have a nice day and keep in touch !

Kevin

@kevp888: I made a couple of changes on the menus so hopefully you can open the menus now and access all options. Let me know if the changes helped.

Also I checked the sound player buttons, but they seem to be labeled properly (same as in the old UI). I understand that it is only with the computer that you can't play them? Maybe the problem is not that the buttons are not labeled but that they can't be reached for some other reason?

Hi Frederic,
Thanks again for all your effort !

1) With my smartphone :
Yes ! Now, I can see the “menu” and “user menu”, and I can click and open them.
But, up to now, I can’t see the items “sounds”, “tags”, “forum”, “map”, “donate” and “upload sounds” (the problem remains with the mobile version and with the computer version of the page).

2) With my old PC,
I can see the items “sounds”, “tags”, “forum”, “map”, “donate” and “upload sounds” and I can click them.
I can also see the “menu” and “user menu”, but up to now, I can’t open them. (However, I remember that I could open them some months ago, so I guess there’s a way to solve this problem.)
About the sound player buttons, yes, maybe they can’t be reached, but I can’t understand why, as some months ago it was possible to reach them with the exact same computer and the exact same configuration. (So, here again, I think there’s a way to improve)

Sorry that I’m not an expert in the matter of accessibility, and that I’m not so fluent in English too. But, I’ll try to do my best to help !

Hope some other blind users could read this thread and could help or add some interesting new feedback !

Have a nice day !

Kevin

Dear Frederic,
Just a suggestion :
Would it be possible to add an option in the profile settings to make a sound play automatically when one open its detailed page ?
In that case, no more problem to reach the player buttons, right ?

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

I'd rather not add more options to the profile, I think we should find a better solution. However, when you say that you can't play a sound, does it happen in the "detail" sound page, or also in pages where multiple sounds appear (the search page or the front page for example)?

In all pages, unfortunately, as I can't reach any player button anywhere...

I deployed some more changes so you can check if the menu buttons work better now. About the sound players I still have not done any changes. I'll think about it. They don't work with the PC but they work on Android right?

Dear Frederic,

As my wife had some time to spend this afternoon, I asked her to have a look to the screen of my computer, and I think you’ll be interested to know about the results !

First, about the sound player: I think the problem comes from my old Firefox browser, because my wife told me that she couldn’t see any player botton anywhere. As I told you, I’ve already reached these buttons and clicked on them some months ago, but I guess you probably made some changes in the protocol recently, that my old browser doesn’t like…
Similarly, I’ve asked my wife to click on the “menu” and “user menu” buttons with the mouse, and it doesn’t work properly, the menus don’t open. So, here again, even if I opened these menu before, I suppose you’ve probably made some recent changes that my old browser don’t like…
So, finally, it seems I have to change my outdated computer to continue using FS with this beautiful moddern UI, which is comprehensible, but I should confess that I’m not so glad...

On the other hand, with my android phone, I have to say that I’m very happy because it seems the issues are solved ! Now, I can see and click all the items in the menus ! Great job ! Well done Frederic !

Well, I wish you a very nice evening, and a very good resting time !

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

I'm happy to hear that everything works now with the mobile phone. If new issues appear, we'll keep on fixing them.

About the compatibility with the old computer, if elements are not visible either in the screen I suspect the problem is that the browser has trouble running some of the javascript code that was introduced recently (or al least after the last time it did work for you). It would be very helpful if you were able to access the "developer's console" in your browser and share with me any error messages that appear there. If you can't manage doing this, I'll try to set up some virtual machine with Win XP and Mozilla 52.9.0 to see if I can reproduce the error. If it did work at some point, it should definitely be fixable.

Dear Frederic,
Hope this is what you're looking for :

TypeError: window.matchMedia(...).addEventListener is not a function[En savoir plus] index.fbc63d266eab.js:818:354
Impossible de lire le média. Aucun décodeur pour les formats nécessaires : audio/mp4, video/mp4 browser.xul

Does it help you ?

Kevin

Yes this helps. I’ll into that and ask more questions if I need to. Cheers!

Great !
Just hope I’d be able to answer your next questions !

Have a nice evening !

Kevin

Hi again Kevin,

I just released some fixes that should make Freesound work properly in your WinXP setup. Please let me know if this fixes your issues.

Dear Frederic,

THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!!
Wonderful ! I can see the player now, with all the buttons properly labelled ! And the sounds play perfectly !
With the win XP computer, I just experience some minor issues with the rating buttons which are not labelled (both in the lists and in the detailed pages), and with the social networks buttons which aren’t labelled as well.
But honestly, I’m so happy to be able to use FS now, that I’d certainly not complain anymore !

Have a nice evening and a very good week-end, and once more, thank you so much !

Kevin