Hello all,
I'm considering OSTicket for a ticketing system at the company I work for. One thing I've noticed about it so far is that it could do with some tuning for screen readers. I'm not sure where in the code to make the changes, and I don't know the system, or web programming, enough to submit changes to the git repo. Hopefully, the changes necessary will be simple, and some of the experienced developers here will be able to make them.
The following are the two problems I've found so far. I'm using NVDA 2016.1 (http://www.nvaccess.org) on Windows 7, running Firefox 45.0.2. I'm a long-time screen reader user, and rely on this kind of technology for all my computer use, so I know screen readers well. I just don't know PHP or HTML well enough to do this kind of updating.
1. All form fields are missing labels. For instance, if I tab to a checkbox, I hear that it's a checkbox and whether it's checked or not. What I don't hear is what it goes to--that is, what am I toggling or agreeing to when I activate it? Edit fields are the same: there's no indication of what I'm editing. Select list, radio buttons, and the like all suffer from this problem.
2. In tables where the form element label is on the left and the field is on the right (general settings, for instance) the command to tell the screen reader to read cell by cell fails to work properly. Instead of reading just the cell to the left of the form element, it reads the *entire* column. Just to hear that this edit field has to its left the text "short time format", I have to hear all the labels in that column that came before the label I'm interested in. You can imagine how inefficient and annoying that gets.
In short, the form fields in OSTicket need some labeling work, while the tabels need some help so that they don't expose entire columns as single cell values. I hope I'm making sense. I know that screen reader use can be confusing to those who don't need the technology. If I can clarify anything, please let me know. Thanks for any suggestions or information.
I'm considering OSTicket for a ticketing system at the company I work for. One thing I've noticed about it so far is that it could do with some tuning for screen readers. I'm not sure where in the code to make the changes, and I don't know the system, or web programming, enough to submit changes to the git repo. Hopefully, the changes necessary will be simple, and some of the experienced developers here will be able to make them.
The following are the two problems I've found so far. I'm using NVDA 2016.1 (http://www.nvaccess.org) on Windows 7, running Firefox 45.0.2. I'm a long-time screen reader user, and rely on this kind of technology for all my computer use, so I know screen readers well. I just don't know PHP or HTML well enough to do this kind of updating.
1. All form fields are missing labels. For instance, if I tab to a checkbox, I hear that it's a checkbox and whether it's checked or not. What I don't hear is what it goes to--that is, what am I toggling or agreeing to when I activate it? Edit fields are the same: there's no indication of what I'm editing. Select list, radio buttons, and the like all suffer from this problem.
2. In tables where the form element label is on the left and the field is on the right (general settings, for instance) the command to tell the screen reader to read cell by cell fails to work properly. Instead of reading just the cell to the left of the form element, it reads the *entire* column. Just to hear that this edit field has to its left the text "short time format", I have to hear all the labels in that column that came before the label I'm interested in. You can imagine how inefficient and annoying that gets.
In short, the form fields in OSTicket need some labeling work, while the tabels need some help so that they don't expose entire columns as single cell values. I hope I'm making sense. I know that screen reader use can be confusing to those who don't need the technology. If I can clarify anything, please let me know. Thanks for any suggestions or information.