Accessibility and proposed Chrome extension API and UI changes

tl;dr: I had some concerns regarding the accessibility of proposed changes to Chrome extensions (the API and browser UI). After posting on the Chromium discussion group, most of these have been addressed, though I think there is still some work needed in order to maintain the current level of accessibility. If you are into technical discussions - perhaps this is most apt for extension developers - you might be interested in following or commenting in the discussion linked below).


Recently, Google has shared some proposals for the next version of the Chrome extension APIs, in the “Manifest v3” document [0]. Several significant changes are coming, and some sound great for user privacy and control over what extensions can do.

One area that concerns me, though, is accessibility. To summarise: some browser extensions that provide assistive features need to run on all web pages automatically, so that they can help their users access those pages. However, in future, the user will need to go through several extra steps in order to grant extensions access to run on all pages. By default, extensions will not be able to run on all pages, and will require explicit activation on each page. (There are potential privacy and security benefits to this, of course.)

Some of us are concerned that these extra steps could present barriers that some users would be unable to overcome independently.

I posted in the Chromium development group [1] to provide some feedback and suggestions. Many of my concerns were quickly addressed by one of the Chrome developers, and it’s great to see that they have been and are thinking about this. However I think that some more work would be needed to ensure that accessibility is maintained as much as possible.

I thought I’d point you to the thread in the Chromium group [1] in case you would like to follow the discussion, or have any suggestions.

Note: I don’t know the level of accessibility of the Chromium group’s web interface. As it’s running on Google Groups, I imagine it may be possible to access it with a news client, even if the web UI presents barriers to anyone - if you’re having trouble accessing it and want to, let me know and I’ll try to find out more.

best regards,


Matthew

[0] Specific part of the document about which I am concerned: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPu6Wy4LWR66EFLeYInl3NzzhHzc-qnk4w4PX-0XMw8/edit#heading=h.oenw1ekaaubz

[1] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-extensions/5BO_7FAq1XU

-- 
Matthew Tylee Atkinson
--
Senior Accessibility Engineer
The Paciello Group
https://www.paciellogroup.com
A Vispero Company
https://www.vispero.com/
--
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Received on Sunday, 24 February 2019 19:30:11 UTC