I'm excited about this. when I used windows I preferred Firefox to any other browser. now maybe I'll be able to use it again. always nice to have more than 1.
> On Dec 19, 2020, at 6:55 PM, Jonathan C. Cohn <jon.c.c...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I finally tracked down the article. > https://blog.mozilla.org/accessibility/voiceover-preview-for-macos-firefox/ > <https://blog.mozilla.org/accessibility/voiceover-preview-for-macos-firefox/> > > VoiceOver Preview for macOS Firefox > > Asa Dotzler > <https://blog.mozilla.org/accessibility/author/asamozillacom/>December 15, > 2020 > For the better part of two decades, Mozilla has been building browsers that > are highly accessible for users with disabilities. While we’ve worked to > ensure that people with a wide range of disabilities can participate on the > web, much of our engineering effort has been focused on improvements for > screen readers, an assistive technology that allows blind users to engage > with computers through synthesized speech or a braille display. > > On Windows, Firefox supports the two most popular screen readers > <https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/#primary>, NVDA and JAWS. On > Linux, Firefox works with the Orca screen reader. On Android, Firefox users > have their pick of Google’s Talkback or Samsung’s Voice Assistant. And on > iOS, Firefox users can work with the built-in VoiceOver screen reader. > > That brings us to macOS. About 15 years ago, Apple introduced a built-in > screen reader to macOS called VoiceOver. There were a couple of efforts to > get Firefox working with VoiceOver but it never reached a usable state. Mac > was the one major Firefox platform that simply wasn’t accessible to blind > users. > > At the beginning of 2020, we set out to fix that. Three members of the > accessibility engineering team, Morgan, Eitan, and Marco, put together a one > year plan <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/Mac2020> to deliver solid > VoiceOver screen reader support on macOS. In February, the team started work > in earnest. The first steps were to build tools for reverse engineering the > under-documented macOS and VoiceOver APIs. Over the next ten versions of > Firefox, the team would implement VO features, fix bugs, and perform all > kinds of testing to verify that features and fixes were working as expected > and to document the remaining gaps. > > Now here we are at Firefox 85 Beta > <https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/#beta> and we’re almost > done. Firefox supports all the most common VoiceOver features and with plenty > of performance. Users should be able to navigate through most web content and > all of the browser’s primary interface without problems. But we’re not quite > done yet. The web is huge and the browser interface is wide and deep so we > need more people putting Firefox and VoiceOver to the test and letting us > know what’s working and not working before we can call it done. > > This is where you come in. If you’re a part time or full time screen reader > user on macOS, we’d love for you to update to Firefox 85 Beta > <https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/desktop/#beta> and give it a spin > with VoiceOver. We expect you’ll find it pretty solid but there are a few > known issues, like VoiceOver search > <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1681909> not working, and > Firefox sub-menus <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1681292> and > tree views expanded/collapsed state > <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1680589> not being announced. > And there are no doubt use cases we haven’t considered or tested so you may > find additional bugs or feature gaps and we’re counting on you to tell us all > about those so we can complete this work as soon as possible. Please report > any bugs you find to Bugzilla > <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?bug_type=defect&component=Disability%20Access%20APIs&op_sys=macOS&product=Core&rep_platform=Desktop&version=Firefox%2085> > and if you’d like to chat about what’s working and not working for you, you > can find us on Matrix > <https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#accessibility:mozilla.org>. We look forward > to hearing from you. > > What’s next? We’re going to watch for your feedback and address any > significant issues that you surface. With your help, in a release or two > we’ll be able to call VoiceOver support complete and we can move on to other > features and fixes from our roadmap > <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility/Roadmap>. > > > > Sent from my iPhone > > -- > The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries > list. > > If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if > you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or > moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. > > Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. 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