Hello all, a member of my ward who is blind has recently been trying to use the church website but has found some of the interfaces completely unusable. He went through some of the steps with a missionary (fully sighted) to get himself unblocked, but recorded his experience which I will share below. Is there someone on the church website team that is focused on accessibility?
Here are his specific observations:
The website churchofjesuschrist.org, is not accessible to blind and visually impaired screen reader users for the following reasons.
1. Form fields are mislabeled.
2. Web elements such as buttons are mislabeled.
3. Redirect to a new page does not explain the structure or architecture of page.
4. Critical buttons are hidden.
DETAIL
1. Form Fields
All Form Fields are mislabeled. I encountered this problem when I went to recover my login credentials.
First the recovery page does not announce that now I am on recovery page. The recovery page has many form fields.
The Membership Number field reads NAME. Elder Carter who is fully sighted told me that this is where I should enter my Membership Number. For a visually impaired screen reader user, it is impossible to tell where to enter Number, when the form is saying NAME.
The next form field should be email as Elder Carter pointed to me. The screen reader calls it NAME.
The next form field is for telephone number. The screen reader calls it NAME.
As you can see, all these form fields are not labeled correctly and as such they are completely inaccessible to screen reader users.
2 & 3. Web elements such as Buttons mislabeled and redirect to a new page does not explain the structure or architecture of page.
After completing the above fields, the next step is to hit the NEXT button. This Button is labeled membership primary 1.
When I tab once the next button reads MEMBERSHIP PRIMARY 2. This second button is the BACK button. So going back is membership primary 2. confusing.
So, I hit membership Primary 1, which redirected to another page.
On this new page, the screen reader announced Church of Jesus Christ, and then it went silent.
Normally on a new page, the screen reader should announce the basic architecture of the page. For example, it should say, this page has three regions, 8 links, 3 radial buttons, 4 form fields.
Hitting letter R should take me to different regions. Eventually reaching the Main Region where the main content is located.
On the website, hitting letter R, does not navigate Regions. It says nothing.
Elder Carter told me that the page is asking me whether I want the Two Factor Authentication token to be sent to my email or to my phone.
So, he clicked on the radial button that selects phone.
Tabbing once goes to what is labeled NEXT button. The screen reader however calls it MEMBERSHIP PRIMARY 1. Again, the back button is membership primary 2.
I received an 8-numeral token. Eight numerals are too many to remember. Four would suffice.
After hitting the Membership Primary 1, I was redirected to another page, which again did not explain the architecture. Elder Carter helped to put the cursor on the form field where to enter the token for the 2-factor authentication. Again, the screen reader said NAME. In this way a screen reader user cannot know that this is where to put the token.
After we put the token. I tabbed to the button that is supposed to say NEXT. Instead, this button says TOKEN PRIMARY 1. The Back button says, TOKEN PRIMARY 2.
Finally, we did all this, and I recovered my login credentials. I could not do this using the screen reader.
4. Critical Buttons are Hidden
After account recovery, my next task was to figure how to access the Button for Tithing.
That Button is totally out of reach. In other words, it is not obvious where to find it on the Member Dashboard.
I hope that these observations help many Brothers and Sisters who are visually impaired and are using the screen reader.
Some site UI inaccessible for the blind
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Re: Some site UI inaccessible for the blind
I suspect there is someone who can address the accessibility questions, but there is no vehicle to forward information from this user-to-user self-help forum to those who can direct changes to the web pages. Your best bet would be to provide this feedback from the feedback link at the bottom of most church pages. You can provide a link to this thread in your feedback which will lead the church to these details that should be very useful.
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Re: Some site UI inaccessible for the blind
Thanks! At your recommendation I just posted the same feedback via the church feedback link. Some had told me this forum might be the place where website engineers keep an eye open and I could hopefully get some traction, because the Feedback link frequently results in no response. But we'll see how it goes.
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Re: Some site UI inaccessible for the blind
It sounds like a lot of this feedback is specific to the Church Account pages of the Church website (there are different teams for different sections of the website).
At the bottom of the Church website there's a link that says "Accessibility Support." If you click that link, it takes you to a page about accessibility which includes an email address. I'd recommend sending your feedback there as well! You could send the full report, or just a link to this forum thread (I think either would work).
At the bottom of the Church website there's a link that says "Accessibility Support." If you click that link, it takes you to a page about accessibility which includes an email address. I'd recommend sending your feedback there as well! You could send the full report, or just a link to this forum thread (I think either would work).
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
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Re: Some site UI inaccessible for the blind
That page and it's philosophy on addressing accessibility issues appear very promising -- thank you! I have submitted the feedback to that email address as well.