2021-04-14 14:05:43

Hey folks, my brother is doing his master's in accessibility, and he'd be grateful if you could fill out a survey. It involves some inaccessible tasks, to see if blind people can deal with them. The survey is primarily geared towards screen reader users. It's at https://wcag-test.vercel.app/

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reply in this thread.

2021-04-14 15:42:51

What am I suppose to do exactly? How do I get started? What’s up with all the abbreviations and what do they mean?

2021-04-14 16:25:05

@Blind angel 444, I don't know, but the Start button might be a good place to... start.

If you for whatever reason wish to contact me, the best way to do so is through Discord (Minionslayer#2980). You'll get the quickest response times, and by extension, a higher priority. I also sometimes post my thoughts (for the better or worse) over on Twitter at @Minionslayer2.

2021-04-14 16:40:09 (edited by defender 2021-04-14 16:40:33)

I'm surprised their is no compensation if he's working with a university...

2021-04-14 16:48:17

This is the first time I have ever seen a survey like that. @4 I agree.

2021-04-14 16:59:50

Spent some time on this and then gave up; for something this involved and time-consuming, there needs to be compensation. Nice effort, but I think without giving people incentive to struggle through it and fill it out, you won't get many responses. Not something this involved. This isn't like a 2 to 3 question survey.

2021-04-14 17:42:25

So I got curious and went through it myself.
I disagree with those seeking compensation, as I completed it with enough time that i didn't feel particuularly inconvenienced by it. I did think the quality was somewhat lacking though, especially for a university project.

To answer I believe post 2, WCAG is Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, EN is english and PL possibly Polish?

Considering time frames on my own projects, this survey rather comes across as a last minute "oh crap I have a report due in a week" kind of job.

Nathan Smith
Managing Director of Nathan Tech
It's not disability
It's ability!

2021-04-14 17:54:21

I took the time and out of my day to fight with that survey and I would like to be compensated please. It nearly crashed voice over. The university should have given up some gift cards for our inconvenience!!! This mistake needs to be corrected ASAP!!!!!!

2021-04-14 18:19:12 (edited by defender 2021-04-14 18:21:42)

I'm not asking for much, but I don't think it sets good precedent for disabled people to be expected to give up their unique knowledge and time for free out of a social good obligation, especially when dealing with a company or school who can afford to treat you like a normal research participant.  It makes people think we're okay with that by default.
Talking to researchers who do give compensation, they are quite adamant that this is wrong, even more so than me for instance.
If it's a high school or community college student, or a non profit startup, or  a simple survey which has an obvious positive effect on our entire community like Webaim, it's different for me.
The only negative I see is that this can restrict the survey to participants within the country, but do to research participant rights laws this often happens anyway.

2021-04-14 18:54:29 (edited by Minionslayer 2021-04-14 18:55:25)

@Blind angel 444, Why don't you just contact the researchers? If and when we get any means of communication. I'll be brutally honest here, you sound a little entitled to me. How would they know that VO almost crashed for you? How much time did you actually spend taking the survey? That, and I really can't take you seriously (what with the moderate over-use of punctuation).
That being said, In retrospect, I have to agree with the thoughts of general lack of quality with the survey (what with the spelling errors, and, were those buttons supposed to be unlabelled?) To be fair, I also don't think I was inconvenienced by the survey, and if we can get people using better web design in the future, I'd like to consider that my compensation.

If you for whatever reason wish to contact me, the best way to do so is through Discord (Minionslayer#2980). You'll get the quickest response times, and by extension, a higher priority. I also sometimes post my thoughts (for the better or worse) over on Twitter at @Minionslayer2.

2021-04-14 19:46:53

I helped.

Who am I? Simply me!

2021-04-14 19:56:53

In our university there are a lot of studies where the participants aren't compensated. I don't see this as a huge problem. My biggest takeaway with such studies is the project itself, not the compensation.

@8 That's not how this works: You don't participate in a survey voluntarily knowing that there is no compensation and then basically demand one afterwards. You could have just not done the survey or stopped halfway through if it inconvenienced you so much.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.

2021-04-14 19:58:39

This survey has been prepared by a polish university student. I helped out a bit to ensure everything is alright. Compensation for this kind of research just isn't a thing here. Our universities are fully state-owned and free for polish citizens, so they definitely couldn't afford that. At a PHD level, maybe, just maybe, but not earlier.

I suggested making an English version of this survey to get a wider set of perspectives, but I had no idea how it would come across in the international community.

All the issues raised here will be communicated back to the person in charge, so thanks for the feedback for those who participated. If there are any specific things you wish were improved, feel free to post them.

2021-04-14 20:13:43 (edited by George_Gaylord 2021-04-14 20:14:40)

@8, what are you babbling about? The university, didn't, Quote: "inconvenience!!!", you. Out of your own free will you took it upon yourself to go fill out the form. As @Minionslayer said, you could have just quit doing it halfway through instead of doing it to the end, then moaning and yowling about you fighting to finish it. Super entitled. Also, I think you're like 15, 16, can't remember, but if you're under 18, which I think you revealed in another topic, you wouldn't even qualify for compensation anyways.

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2021-04-14 20:27:43 (edited by JaceK 2021-04-14 20:31:11)

Maybe it's just me, but I noped out as soon as it asked what disabilities I have. I get it, research study, but I don't want to put that sort of intimate detail out there for a whole university to see especially in another country, because honestly, being blunt, I don't know who will see the information. Okay there's no name, but...still. Having that as the very first question left a bad taste in my mouth, and I figured putting I'm not disclosing that'd skew the results a bit.

I don't care about compensation or not, as said, that comes off as super super entitled wanting compensation when people have pointed out how Polish universities work differently to say US or UK universities.

EDIT: Okay to clarify, @1. Don't get me wrong. I get the idea behind the first two questions but I feel like instead of asking what disability/screenrreader somebody's using, there's an, IMO, better way to word it, give a list of commonly used OSes/devices and an other box for example...

Windows/Narrator
Windows/Jaws
Windows/NVDA
Mac OS/Voiceover
Talkback/Android
Voiceover/Iphone or ipad
Other

Other text box here

That's how I'd personally have handled it, I'm still iffy on the whole what disabilities does a respondent have being the very first question, again, maybe it's just me but that leaves a bad impression right away

Warning: Grumpy post above
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2021-04-14 20:37:46

Yeah. It was fine. I paused part way through for lunch, but otherwise, fine. I don't mind the disability thing, especially as it is a blank field, meaning you can share whatever you are comfortable with. There are other data oddities, but I'll leave it to the researchers themselves to fully be concerned about that.

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2021-04-14 20:44:03

I took the servey. Well, as I deal with accessibility issues most of the time I go to sites that run on small and very small businesses that don't really care about accessibility, I thought why not? I don't usually have much time to spare, but today I had some, so I did it.
In stead of talking about compensations and such, let's talk about the servey itself. What did you struggle with? Which of those things you saw there you recognise in the real life day to day web browsing, somewhere, on some websites? Which ones hit pretty close to bone, by which I mean that it happens actually on most websites and web apps, even electron ones(looking at you discord)?
Personally, I liked the one with the timer, since I got that kind of experience my self, not that spammy, but still. As a bonus, it annoyed the hell out of me, what about you guys?
Next one, the forms, both the one with the email, password and country field, as well as the one with the radio buttons, the select box, and the weird enough multy select dropdown things.
And don't even get me started on the videos with no sound, as well as those grafs with the label below the image itself. I mean, I never saw that anywhere, who the hell does that anymore, since the existance of the alt attribute?

2021-04-14 20:46:56

I've run across unlabeled image quite a lot in Brave, FWIW

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

Jace's EA PGA Tour guide for blind golfers

2021-04-14 21:01:25

@bgt lover, A massive pet peeve of mine is when websites neglect to put any form of navigational elements on their pages. This includes headings, properly-formatted lists (AKA, actually rapping lists in <ol> or <ul>), and landmarks. I hate, hate, HATE websites that do this, and I didn't skip a heartbeat when mentioning it in the survey. I also indicated massive issues with the video with no sound, and how I could only get to the player by tabbing to it. The images that weren't formatted as images was also weird to me, in that, I couldn't press G to navigate between them. Likewise, I mentioned the inaccessibility of the form elements. I found it really annoying when NVDA announced the state of the timer whenever its value changed. Serious distraction.

If you for whatever reason wish to contact me, the best way to do so is through Discord (Minionslayer#2980). You'll get the quickest response times, and by extension, a higher priority. I also sometimes post my thoughts (for the better or worse) over on Twitter at @Minionslayer2.

2021-04-14 21:10:13

Yeah, the video with no sound was one of the concerns, I assumed I can't get to the player at all. The timer is annoying like hell as I said, as well as the forms. I didn't try to use the quick navigation keys, since I thought it was a small servey so didn't bother. In general however, I totally agree with you here, that way of structuring content gives me the headakes all the time, rofl.

2021-04-14 21:14:32 (edited by Minionslayer 2021-04-14 21:16:31)

I also found it slightly weird how each  test was separated from its related feedback section. Not a big deal, just...
Edit: I have also just discovered, it seems to be entirely possible to waltz through the questionnaire without answering any questions at all. I mean come on. At least make the required feedback fields... required.
Edit 2: Some of the questions, anyway.

If you for whatever reason wish to contact me, the best way to do so is through Discord (Minionslayer#2980). You'll get the quickest response times, and by extension, a higher priority. I also sometimes post my thoughts (for the better or worse) over on Twitter at @Minionslayer2.

2021-04-14 22:11:48

I personally feel like the survey did an amazing job of doing what it set out to do. I think it was intentionally created with a bunch of accessibility problems to showcase a lot of what goes on on websites today. A lot of the issues I came across on this survey were issues that I come across when navigating websites on a daily basis, and the fact that they showcased all of those issues to bring light to them and attempt to get people to fix them is very commendable. I hope they learn from this, and I hope that it teaches a lot more people as well.

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2021-04-15 04:54:30 (edited by defender 2021-04-15 04:55:05)

I don't feel it's entitled to ask for some compensation in this kind of study, but knowing what I do now about Polish universities, it's more understandable.
I tend to only do uncompensated surveys if they are done well (prier research done rather than lots of open ended questions or uneducated assumptions) and they have a decent chance of actually being published in a paper or directing policy.
I started making that choice after dealing with just too many not so great surveys and not having as much time to spend on it thanks to school.  But I'll try this one out as it seems interesting and well researched.

2021-04-15 05:43:47

@8. Entitled much? Did the researchers pull a gun on you and forced you to take the survey? No so please quit complaining about compensation. Ugg. This is what I hate about the blind community.

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