It's very unnatural to send read receipts for keyboard only screen reader users

[pvagner]

Description

One day I have noticed when I'm chatting from Riot-Web then move to Riod-Android I see the messages I have already read on Riot-Web after tapping Jump to first unread message on Android.
I assume that since I'm using Riot-Web with a screen reader I am not sending out read receipts when I should be doing so.
I've originally asked about this in a #riot-web:matrix.org discussion on 22nd november 2017.
The problem might be that many screen readers (all I know of) do implement so called virtual buffer or a virtual document navigation model (also known as browse mode in some cases) to help visually disabled users to navigate all the web content including static text which is not designed to be focusable or interactive in any way. This paradigm has a lot of shortcomings and there are initiatives that are trying to get rid of this navigation model. If you are interested, see this article on the Mozilla wiki.
When such a navigation mode is active screen reader consumes all the keypresses thus leave less events to handle at Riot side of things to work out when to send the read receipts.
Some screen readers are consuming arrow keys, page up / page down keys, home and end keys, space, enter, tab, letters, numbers and punctuation symbols including their variants with modifiers held down, while other screen readers are only consuming what they need. It includes arrow keys, page up / down, home and end for emulating document like navigation experience.
I don't have clear proposal on how to overcome this, so I will just describe how I am using Riot.

Steps to reproduce

• Make sure you are in a Riot chatroom in an accessible browser (such as Firefox on Linux) and a screen reader running (e.g. orca on linux)
• Switch to browse mode, navigate to the main landmark and read the content by pressing up and down arrow keys
• When new content arrives repeat this to read new content
• You may like to use quick navigation of your screen reader to navigate to the complementary content where there is a list of rooms to move to a different chatroom to look what's is going on there
• If you have to write a message make sure you are in a browse mode, then press the screen reader specific so called quick navigation key for jumping to the editable text (frequently this is letter e)
• After finding the rich text input field switch into so called focus / forms mode if your screen reader has not switched automatically
• Type in your text and hit enter

If I am using Riot this way I can't notice me posting read receipts unless I write a message.

Log: not sent

Version information

• Platform: web in Firefox on Linux although I expect this to work the same way on Windows

For the web app:

• Browser: Firefox 57. Firefox 56 and earlier is not affected as much as it does not correctly scrol all the content into view when navigated via screen reader. It has been changed because handling infinite scrolling with Firefox 56 and earlier was problematic to screen reader users. Here is relevant Mozilla bug.
• OS: Arch Linux
• URL: riot.im/develop

Links

I think being able to read a bit on Screen reader testing might be relevant, so I've tried to find some suitable articles.

• Testing with screen reader webaim.org
• Evaluating with NVDA
• Testing with JAWS (may contain outdated info)
• How to test with Firefox and NVDA on Windows by Marco Zehe
  Unfortunately there are no available materials on testing with orca on linux although the experience will be very similar I would say.

[Palid]

@pvagner I assume this hasn't been entirely solved yet. Is the progress from #302 still relevant?

[pvagner]

I think this is no longer an issue with Firefox 91 and orca on linux. I'll test on windows later.
Scrolling the timeline has been reworked since I have reported it some three years ago.
I can do the following:

• Open a room with unread messages and press Jump to first unread message at the top of the timeline.
• Read a few messages with screen reader switched into browse mode.
• Close and reopen the browser tab with element and press the Jump to the first unread button again.
• Notice how the new position has been scrolled to.

[Palid]

I'll close the ticket if that's no longer an issue, though we probably want to immortalize your feedback somewhere so it won't get lost.
@novocaine @kittykat have a look at this please, I'll try to figure something out in the meantime too.