Tips for using the WebRTC WebEx

Hello APA,

I spent some time filing a11y issues against the W3C WebEx WebRTC 
application today. As a consequence, I discovered a few things that 
might prove useful to any screen reader users who use this version...

1. The interface consists of multiple modal dialogs.

The "Meeting in progress" dialog appears over the top of the log in page 
and remains there for the duration of the meeting.

If you're using the application for the first time, the "Getting 
started" dialog opens over the top of the "Meeting in progress" dialog. 
The subsequent "Audio connection" and "Video connection" dialogs replace 
the "Getting started" dialog over the top of the "Meeting in progress" 
dialog.

If the "Host is not present" dialog appears, it is overlaid on top of 
all other open dialogs.

Keyboard focus is not currently managed properly, so it's possible to 
interact with bits from all the different layered dialogs.

The best approach is to dismiss the "Host is not yet present" dialog (by 
using the "Ok" button). If this is the first time you've used the 
application, you should then use the "Getting started" button to get 
your audio and video connections setup (this will dismiss these dialogs 
permenantly).

This should leave you with the "Meeting in progress" dialog. At this 
point you just need to ignore anything that looks like the original log 
in page underneath (including the log in fields and the join buttons).

2. Some buttons have menus.

Once you're connected to a meeting there are two buttons that indicate 
the way your audio and video are connected. For example one button might 
be "Connect using my computer", the other might be "Video connection". 
These buttons have menus that let you change your audio/video settings.

Use space or enter to activate the button, then the down arrow to 
navigate into and around the menu. Use enter to select the setting you 
want, and this will close the menu and return your focus to the button.

Once you get the hang of it, the WebRTC interface is a lot more usable 
with a screen reader than the original plugin version. It's much easier 
to discover who else is on the call, the chat system works well too.

One possible issue is that it doesn't seem to be possible to select the 
audio input/output device used by the application. I use my screen 
reader through a secondary soundcard, but the WebRTC WebEx seems to 
insist on using my default soundcard.

The issues I filed are issues 10 through 16 here:
https://github.com/w3c/webex/issues/

-- 
@LeonieWatson @tink@toot.cafe tink.uk Carpe diem

Received on Friday, 7 July 2017 19:39:01 UTC