Accessibility Features For Assistive Technology

[munawarb]

• [X] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

---

Bug description

While the Electron app is mostly accessible because it's rendered in web page form, there are some things that the app is lacking that make it difficult to use with assistive technology such as screen-reading software. I've looked at #752 but it doesn't address specific access issues; just general guidelines. I use a screen-reader called NVDA which is free and open-source, so it can be used to test Signal accessibility. https://www.nvaccess.org/

Steps to reproduce

1. Incoming chats should be read automatically by screen readers. In HTML 5, this is done commonly using ARIA; I don't know the Electron equivalent since my expertise aren't in Electron app development.
2. If step 1 will require much work, what would help screen-reader users somewhat is for a sound to play when a message arrives. Right now, this can be configured by turning on notifications, but notifications only appear when the app doesn't have focus. It would be helpful to get an audio tone when a new message arrives even when focused in the chat in question. This feature, at minimum, would make the app so much more user-friendly for us because now we can hear that a new message has arrived and we need to find it.
3. Every message should be separated by a navigation element such as a heading. This will allow screen-reader users to quickly jump from message to message. Right now, we have to arrow passed the "More info" and "Delete" options to get to the next and previous messages. However, screen-readers allow users to press H for next heading and other things similar to this, such as I and SHIFT+I to move among list items. So placing the messages in an HTML list or placing each message in a heading would help.
4. In the reading order, there are two buttons placed after the edit field to type a new message. These buttons are unlabeled so we do not know what they are.
5. Pressing LEFT or RIGHT ARROW when in a pull-down menu (such as File) should move to the previous and next menus; right now, the keys do nothing. Because the menu bar in the Electron app is not visible to screen-reading software, an access technology user will not be aware of the menu bar's existence unless by chance, so allowing for LEFT and RIGHT ARROW movement across the rest of the menus will allow us to discover the other menus available. A lot of us press ALT+F and hope it does something (which, thankfully, in Signal's case, it does and this was how I discovered that there was a File menu with Preferences and other items.)

Actual result:

Expected result:

Screenshots

Platform info

Signal version:

Operating System:

Linked device version:

Link to debug log