Accessibility

Schreibzeug should be usable with a screen reader, with the keyboard alone and with large text. The goal is WCAG 2.2 level AA, the core of the European standard EN 301 549 and of the German BITV 2.0 for public bodies. The interface around the document meets the automatic checks of it; the document itself is drawn on a canvas by the engine, which sets limits described below.

The interface

• Every button without text has a name ("Fett", "Kommentare"), icons beside text are hidden from screen readers, and messages such as "Gespeichert" or an error are read out (role="status", role="alert"). The page is marked as German.
• Menu bar as the ARIA menu bar pattern has it: left and right go along the menus (and switch an open one), Enter, Space or down open a menu at its first entry, up and down go through it, Home and End to the first and last, Escape back to the menu bar (src/ui/menu-bar.tsx, src/ui/menu-keys.ts).
• F6 and Umschalt+F6 move between the document, the menu bar and the toolbar, as in Word and LibreOffice. In the document Tab is a tab (a cell, a form field), so F6 is the way out; it comes back to the cursor where it was.
• Toolbars are one stop for Tab each, as the ARIA toolbar pattern has it: Tab reaches the button last used, the arrow keys, Home and End go along the buttons; lists such as the font keep their own stop and arrow keys (src/ui/roving-toolbar.ts).
• Keyboard shortcuts of each editor are under Hilfe → Tastenkürzel.
• The engine's input has the file's name, so a screen reader says which document has the focus.

Screen reader support

The engine can read out what happens in the document (common/workerspeech.js): it writes into an aria-live region beside its input, which a screen reader announces. It is off unless switched on, under Hilfe → Unterstützung für Screenreader or with Strg+Alt+Z in the document (on a Mac also Strg+Umschalt+Z). Off, the engine does not even listen for it, so it costs nothing; on, it compares the selection once per cursor move. The choice is kept in the browser (schreibzeug.screenreader), as web-apps keeps it.

What it reads:

Text documents	with the arrow keys the character, with Strg the word, up and down the line; a selection with "ausgewählt"
Spreadsheets	the cell's value and address, a selected range from its first to its last cell, the sheet on switching
Presentations	the slide's number, a selected object with its alternative text
Pictures and shapes	their kind, text, title and description (alternative text)

The words around the text ("ausgewählt", "leere Zelle", "Folie") are German (packages/editor-core/src/screen-reader.ts); the engine would say them in English.

How it is checked

e2e/accessibility.spec.ts checks the sign-in, the file list and every editor (document, spreadsheet, presentation, note) with axe-core against the rules of WCAG 2.2 AA, in light and dark; a single violation fails it. It also goes through the menu bar with the keyboard and checks that the screen reader support reads a selection out in German, is remembered and follows Strg+Alt+Z, that F6 leads out of a document and a spreadsheet and back, and that a toolbar is one stop for Tab. The other end-to-end tests find elements as a screen reader does, by role and name.

A machine finds only part of the problems: whether a label makes sense and a task can be done with a screen reader needs a person.

Where it falls short

• The document is a canvas. A screen reader hears what the engine announces, but cannot browse the document: no reading mode, no "read all", no jumping between headings. Headings, list levels and the place in a table are not announced, nor is typed text.
• PDFs are read out not at all; the engine has no descriptions for them.
• Alternative text that a document brings is read out and kept on saving; there is no dialog yet to add it to a picture.
• Exported PDFs are not tagged (PDF/UA).
• A full run with NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack is still to be done.

For an accessibility statement this means "partially conformant", with the points above as the content that is not accessible.