2017-11-10 20:24:18

Hello all. So, you may or may not know Marco Zehe, one of the members of Mozzila's accessibility team. He wrote a blog post about the current situation with firefox which targets NVDA, but has links for other screen reader users as well. You can find it at: https://www.marcozehe.de/2017/11/07/fir … rspective/

2017-11-10 22:11:05

I tried Firefox 57 with NVDA, and it doesn't seem too bad. Nothing seems to be broken. I'm hoping the same wil be true with Orca on Linux.

2017-11-11 12:49:17

Interesting that there was not too much talks about linux. I don't use it, but hope it works well for you guys who do. I've tried 57 nightlies, and while there are some performance issues as they said especially with more complex web apps, it's not as bad as freedom scientific tells us. Well, it probably will be with jaws cause they refuse to get rid of virtual buffers, sadly one day they will have to move on from 2000's technologies.

2017-11-11 20:17:32

I use both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome and I have no problem with Firefox. I have the latest version of Firefox I think.

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2017-11-24 01:54:26

As a longer-time NVDA and Firefox user, I can confirm, that there indeed are certain, quite annoying issues with the newest Firefox release, which slow our, so far routine operations down!
The most annoying of those appears by operating with combined-lists:
We move, jump to a combined list, and it does open the way it did before, but then all similarities end.
When we move down and up in the list, NVDA doesn't read the list-elements anymore at all, so we have no idea where, at which list-elements we currently are.
With the help of a sighted friend, we figured out a "cure", a partial solution for the issue, but as I said, it's just a partial one, and using combined-lists is still quite...uncomfortable, and much more time-consuming than before.
Namely, whenever we enter a combined-list, we must press space, so then, and only then, the elements of the list will be read while browsing it, but then, when we wish to select one of them, we must press space again, if we don't do so, tabbing to the next element will not work.
Then, after tabbing to the next element, (for example imagine a row of combined-lists, containing options, settings, alternatives), we must press space to activate the reading of the next list, for if we don't, we won't hear a single word again!
And we have to repeat this process by every single combined list we wish to access, each single time, in cases of settings, options, many times in a row...normally, we had no such unpleasent hold-up with the old Firefox, so this issue will surely piss not only me off, but all other regular Firefox and NVDA users!
Plus, there are some other, less-annoying, minor issues, which I won't even mention here, but the fact is, that even many sighted Firefox-users keep complaining about this new release, so hopefully the Mozilla team got bombarded by complaints by now, and will correct these issues in their next release, which, due the tons of complaints I guess, they will issue pretty soon!

Summarized, the new Firefox is a nightmare for NVDA users, it even seems to work slower than the old one, (despite my change from Windows 8.1 to 10 yesterday), it is much less screen-reader-friendly in general, and since sighted users have also several, more serious issues with it, we hope for a new update correcting all those, ASAP!

2017-11-24 06:50:50

All the latest firefox does for me is crash. It's junk. I can visit maybe 2, at most 3 pages before this happens... I simply use crome now. This version installed automatically at some point last week.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2017-11-24 17:31:28

Hello.


I'd highly recommend those that are on firefox and are using the latest version to report bugs to mozilla.


You can sign up and report bugs here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

I'm gone for real :)

2017-11-24 22:24:34

Yes, currently Firefox is intermittenedly laggy, but at least there is a knowledge, that it will be fixed.
Here things got alot better after cleaning out caches, so one more thing to try, if Firefox behaves in an unacceptable manner.
Hehe, funny how I'm still not willing to switch to Chrome or anything else for that matter, but it's probably down to my spectrum tendencies again. If you're used to do something in certain way, changing that way might be more difficult than struggling through, but still using the old way. Or may-be for me things don't really have to be all that lightening fast. Heck, for mor than ten years my internet connection worked like an intermittened amplitude modulated radio - it was never stable and it was completely impossible to predict, whether it's gonna be there at all, but I survived. So when getting to my current and completely okay internet, in the beginning it was somewhat strange, that it worked like all the time without messing up.
Got a little offtopic, but in the end at the moment I'm simply powered by this hope of a promise, that Firefox will soon be back to it's more energized state. As I'm not a developer or programmer at all, can't offer any help, but there are enough bright minds for that.

2017-11-24 22:41:09

But really, I am seriously considering to change to a different browser, the only problem is the choice, which one I should decide for?
So please tell me, which browser you guys recommend, which one is the most screen-reader-friendly, the most accessable, aka the easiest to use for the blind?
(if there are more than 1 suggestions or candidates, which one is faster...in that case I will probably prefer that one)

2017-11-24 22:55:38 (edited by pulseman45 2017-11-24 23:03:41)

I can confirm the latest Firefox is slower. I think that is actually the reason why it doesn't feel screen-reader-friendly. Too many times, when I go to youtube for example, NVDA will say that I am on a specific element, and the cursor actually moves to the one before it, resulting in me validating on the wrong one. Not that it never happened before, it's probably what happens when the page isn't 100% loaded, but it's much more frequent now.
In fact, a few days ago, one of my friend was asking me how I could use GMail so easily. So I did a demonstration of it, and almost felt ridiculous because that kind of problem didn't stop happening. Well, now at least I know where it comes from.
There are also other bugs, such as Addblock and maybe other addons not appearing on the Tools menu.
I tried Chrome a bit and it is indeed much faster, so I might stick to it at least until Firefox is fixed.

2017-11-25 00:34:00

And you have no screen-reader issues with Chrome?
meaning for example the one with combined-lists, which I told about?
It is becoming really annoying already, NVDA just cannot read list-elements loud anymore, whichever combined-list I try to access, I always have to use the method with "space" key I told about, and it's not only annoying, but also more time-consuming as well, not to mention the fact, that it is also unreliable, sometimes it pretends to totally ignore my choice, and accept it only after refreshing the page, or when accessing the list for the 2nd time...

2017-11-25 03:10:29

Chrome is accessible aside from announcing clickable at every heading

Pics or it didn’t happen

2017-11-25 11:15:49

there are only few things that are not screen reader friendly on chrom, but I'd still take it over firefox. poor firefox users that have lowend computers, cause the last version of ff takes a lot of CPU and ram usage, witch pisses me off so much.

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2017-11-25 12:32:20 (edited by brad 2017-11-25 12:33:18)

Hi.


@gamesmaster.


If you're using NVDA, go to your document formatting options, tab around until you here clickable and untick it then click on okay.

I'm gone for real :)

2017-11-25 15:54:37

@11: Well, I didn't test Chrome enough to know if it has problem with combined lists.

2017-11-26 06:32:46

As an NVDA user, I never had any issues with combined-lists before, and not even IE has them, so I doubt any other browser, except this new Firefox, has any issues with them either.
What I hate like hell is, when certain groups of "software developers and experts", with the sheer aim to "prove how sedulous, how enthusiastic, devoted they are to their duty", and "how hard they work, how much efforts they make to earn their so precious money", are actually capable to totally ruin so far perfectly working, even most popular top quality software!
)again, merely to prove their loyalty to their companies and bosses, and secure their jobs, by convincing them how "hard-working and indispensable" they are)
And this is by far not the 1st...and unfortunately not the last sad case when that happens, and will still happen...at least until money will rule this hopeless, greedy, disappointing human-society and world!

2017-11-26 11:52:51

I've had no issues other than the performance hit that we were told to expect, so I'm happy.  Not switching browsers like some in this thread.

Regards,
Sightless Kombat.
***If you wish to refer to me in @replies, use Sightless***

2017-11-26 13:24:28

Hello.


i've switched between Crhome and Firefox and then Chrome and then firefox again.


I love chromes spead but I'm so used to firefox that I just can't leave.


i'm sticking to Firefox.

I'm gone for real :)

2017-11-26 14:07:51

Can you guys please announce if you see any more improvement? I am using the extended support release. ı am using internet explorer to enter this website.

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2017-11-29 03:03:42

I had a shocking hit to the performance of my computer as a whole with the uptate. Can someone mention if 58 comes out, please? Thank you.

Heroes need foes to test them. Not all teachers can afford to be kind, and some lessons must be harsh.

2017-11-30 18:45:24

those who say they haven't noticed a deterioration  in speed obviously haven’t tried loading element rich pages.

2017-12-01 00:47:24

I am using an older version of JAWS right now, but actually, Firefox has always been kind of crappy for me and Chrome has been an utter piece of garbage where even the most basic navigation has not been possible, so except in very rare instances, I actually use IE as a browser that has worked slightly better than Firefox, which I can use for some stuff and do, and way better than Chrome which as I said, has been almost totally unusable for almost everything, though I admit I have not seriously used Crhome in probably a year or more.

2017-12-01 03:05:56

@22 that's exactly the problem. Chrome updates extremely frequently, and since you haven't used it in a year i can understand how chrome might have been at that time. Now though, it's definitely not anything similar to that. I use it as my primary browser.

2017-12-03 12:49:02

For those, who can't or don't want to get off Firefox, things are slowly, but surely getting better. So at this very moment I would strongly suggest to switch to the latest snapshot of NVDA, which should quite soon become the final full version this year.
So our poor little foxie is still somewhat laggy, but not as much as before and as Mozilla has promised to get everything in order by the next full release, it is not impossible to get there being a little patient and not going nuts.