RE: Using Markdown for Github accessibility

I’ll start this message by saying that I routinely navigate GitHub using a screen reader (NVDA).  My method for jumping from comment to comment is to use single key navigation as follows:

1.       Press “1” to jump to the issue title (properly marked by GitHub).

2.       Press “h” a few times to get through the right sidebar of meta info (participant list is last)

3.       Skip over the list of participants (if it’s long, using “n” in NVDA works fine)

4.       Now use “g” to jump from comment to comment using the profile graphics as the starting point.

So, jumping from comment to comment is not really a problem for me, and if each comment started with a heading just for the sake of having another navigation point, that would probably result in a lot of extra unnecessary listening for me.  If I use these instead to jump across comments, I now have the problem of not knowing who the author is or when they wrote it unless I backtrack first.

In reality, since the comments are visually related as a list, each comment should also be tagged as a <li>.  The majority of comment/forum sites get this wrong with the exception of Wordpress.

That said, I completely agree on using headings within long comments when they make semantic sense.  Trying to force headings to create sub-threads on specific discussions though is simply not going to work in practice because the comment sequence doesn’t support it (i.e. sub-threads are not contiguous).  If there are clear sub-threads in the discussion, they ought to be divided up into separate GitHub issues as I’ve suggested a few times.

Steve

From: David MacDonald [mailto:david100@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2017 3:05 PM
To: Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>
Cc: public-low-vision-a11y-tf <public-low-vision-a11y-tf@w3.org>; GLWAI Guidelines WG org <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Using Markdown for Github accessibility

So would you like every comment to start with a ## level 2 heading going forward?


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On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 2:31 PM, Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com<mailto:wayneedick@gmail.com>> wrote:
There are ways that regular members of the group could help assistive technology users with Github.
The easiest way is to enable heading navigation.
H1 = # text
H2 = ## text
Etc.
Each SC has a main issue, like 78 for adaptive text. Github does not have a way to partition these into threads.
We could block these off with headings.

# To start a new item.
## to continue an item.
Then follow your message from this heading.
People who are not on AG do not need to do this, but members can.
We don't need to go back and address everything. Just start now.
When you start an new idea thread, give it an H1
# New Thread Name
When you respond to a thread give it an H2
## Continue Thread Name
Even 50% compliance would give us landmarks to shoot at.
Wayne