Update On Air section with accessibility mode

[jharris171185]

Hello,
I have a few requests for the On Air section of the program. First and most important it would be nice for the remaining time to be written like this:
0:20 instead of:
0 minutes 20 seconds.
With it written out in text format, it does not dynamically update, so when we are using a Braille display, it takes up a lot more space. Also, it would be nice for it to dynamically update. What I mean is that right now, to know how long we have left on the current track, we have to navigate to the on air section. There we are presented with the song title, remaining time, and listener count. Problem is, the remaining time does not keep updating, so to get an accurate remaining time, we have to tab to next track, then shift tab back to on air. It ends up with a lot more key presses than necessary. If the remaining time would update automatically, even if not spoken, and in numbers only, 1:30 instead of 1 minute 30 seconds, it would take up less space, and probably make easier to update dynamically. Those of us using a Braille display, which is just a device that shows in Braille what is on screen, and is used along with a screen reader, would have a much easier time.
In addition to this, it would be nice to be able to reorder or even hide elements of the on air section. For example, hide listener count and put remaining time before song title for quicker access. Not everyone would have the same preferences for this, so it would be much better to let people set this up however they find it most useful.
Lastly, right now f6 can be used to jump to the active playllist which is good, but it might be handy to make f6 jump back and forth between playlist and on air. So one press of f6 would jump to the playlist, but another press would jump back to on air. Could this be done?

 

[djsoft]

I have a few requests for the On Air section of the program. First and most important it would be nice for the remaining time to be written like this:
0:20 instead of:
0 minutes 20 seconds.

It's actually written as 0:20, looks like screen reader software reads it as text. And the counter is updated automatically - looks like those updates are not picked up by screen reader.

Lastly, right now f6 can be used to jump to the active playllist which is good, but it might be handy to make f6 jump back and forth between playlist and on air. So one press of f6 would jump to the playlist, but another press would jump back to on air. Could this be done?

Currently F6 means it will activate the playlist, even if you press it twice. I'm not sure many users will expect it to switch between the two controls. I think a separate hot key can be added for the On Air section.

 

[jharris171185]

It's actually written as 0:20, looks like screen reader software reads it as text. And the counter is updated automatically - looks like those updates are not picked up by screen reader.

How interesting! That is really odd, because also in addition to how it is read by the screen reader, on my Braille display, it displays the same way in text, not as just the numbers. Any chance you can figure out why it's doing that? I don't know which screen reader you're testing with. The two most common are NVDA, which is free, and JAWS, which is quite costly but also has a demo mode where it can run uninterrupted for 40 minutes. I use NVDA, and because it is free and not lacking any majorly important features, these days I think you will find most people will be using that instead of JAWS.
Currently F6 means it will activate the playlist, even if you press it twice. I'm not sure many users will expect it to switch between the two controls. I think a separate hot key can be added for the On Air section.

That would also be fine. The reason I suggested making f6 jump between the two is that traditionally, that key is often used to jump between multiple parts of a program. For example, in Microsoft Edge, it will jump between the toolbar, favorites, and main part of the window. So f6 would be nice, but a different hotkey would also be just fine, so long as we have a bit of a quicker way to jump around instead of so much tabbing around. This is one of those things that goes beyond basic accessibility, because as it is, the program is fully accessible, in the sense that all controls can be read and accessed, but this is more of a convveniance and ease of use kind of thing. The more hot keys, the better.

 

[jharris171185]

Another observation for on air section is that while the track is announced when it switches, it does not update on the Braille display itself. Not sure why this is, but it is a bit of a problem, as there are some of us who when doing a program may actually prefer to turn off speech completely and just use the output of the Braille display. Typically the Braille display will follow whatever is spoken by the screen reader but there are times where they may not sync up, and this seems to be one of them. Whatever is shown on the Braille display is handled by the screen reading software. We're not talking about multiple programs or anything like that. Screen reader handles both the spoken text as well as output to the Braille display. I hope this info is helpful. I would guess that whatever is keeping the remaining time from updating is also the same reason why the track name doesn't update on the Braille display. Figure that out and you may solve both problems.

 

[djsoft]

the program is fully accessible, in the sense that all controls can be read and accessed, but this is more of a convveniance and ease of use kind of thing. The more hot keys, the better.

Noted for the future versions, thank you.

I would guess that whatever is keeping the remaining time from updating is also the same reason why the track name doesn't update on the Braille display.

I'm not sure what we can do about it. RadioBOSS properly updates all text information so this should be picked up by the reading software.

 

[derek]

I think, short of someone creating an NVDA addon, the way to make the time easier to hear would be to speak it when pressing a key. This could be done by sending the text to the screen reader, or with MSAPI through the monitor output. This feature could be helpful for a cited user, because it could be extended to automatically speak a warning that a track had a specified number of seconds remaining until the end, outro, etc.

 

[djsoft]

I think, short of someone creating an NVDA addon, the way to make the time easier to hear would be to speak it when pressing a key. This could be done by sending the text to the screen reader, or with MSAPI through the monitor output. This feature could be helpful for a cited user, because it could be extended to automatically speak a warning that a track had a specified number of seconds remaining until the end, outro, etc.

We have something like this planned for the future updates.