User Experiences: Accessibility in IE9 Beta
Internet Explorer is a universal product used by people young and old, new and experienced, speaking many different languages. A lot of people take advantage of IE’s built in accessibility features (like page zoom, caret browsing, find in page, etc) and additional assistive technology such as screen readers to use the web. Accessibility is beneficial to everyone no matter what their abilities.
As with every Internet Explorer release, we are committed to delivering a browser that’s accessible for all users. Part of achieving that goal is making sure assistive technology works well with IE. IE9 fundamentally changes how users interact with the browser and how the browser takes advantage of the entire PC. Those changes also impact how assistive technology interacts with IE, which necessitates updates from some assistive technology. For example, the new notification model is not read by many screen readers, and screen readers can no longer depend on the GDI display subsystem since IE9 uses Windows Direct2D and DirectWrite as part of enabling hardware-accelerated HTML5.
We are working with assistive technology vendors on how to engineer their products to best interact with IE9, and the IE9 Beta is one step on the way to an accessible final release. Users who rely on a screen reader or other assistive technology should read the release notes to understand the accessibility issues in the IE9 Beta. If you encounter other accessibility issues as you browse with IE9 please let us know by submitting a bug in connect.
Sharon Newman
Program Manager
Comments
Anonymous
September 20, 2010
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September 20, 2010
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September 20, 2010
"The back/forward buttons no longer have a history dropdown arrow." Right-click or click-and-hold on the button.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
@Frank Oliver. That violates another basic UI principle: don't hide functionality so much that no one can reasonably be expected to discover it. It is NOT obvious that ANYTHING will happen if you click the button. In IE8, it was perfectely clear.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Thanks Frank. I'm sure I would have figured out the right-click option after a while. I bet maybe 5% of people would. But the Click and Hold is a completely new and foreign idea to Windows users. No user would think of that. The only thing remotely similar is hovering over a short hint until the long hint shows up, but its been never used for commands to appear. That's a terrible UI idea unless MS has plans to implement it everywhere. I don't know why the drop down arrow, known and used by hundreds of millions of IE users needed to be changed. Does it take that much extra space? And if you're changing the drop down on the forward/back keys, then why are there still drop downs on the "Add to favorites" and Command Bar icons? If the drop down is so bac, shouldn't you also change those so they use right-click and the new Click and Hold? Sorry. This just seems like a step back to me in ease of use. Every little bit counts, you know, if you want IE to be the best browser.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
...but the claim "known and used by hundreds of millions of IE users" is very very unlikely to be true. No feature besides the back button is likely to get used by more than a few percent of people.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
I would disagree. The drop down arrow is in the menu and toolbar area of just about every Windows program available. It is an essential device in Microsoft Office's ribbon - and for that they did extensive usability testing. I think you'll have a hard time finding people who don't recognize it. And even those who don't would still think of clicking on it to see what it does - and instantly they'll understand. It's just a no-brainer as a great UI feature.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Please implement smooth zooming!Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Favorites were sorted in Z to A order when imported. How do you change the display order?Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Does anyone on the IE team have telemetry data on the amount of use IE8's history dropdown has?Anonymous
September 20, 2010
Favorites were sorted in Z to A order when imported. How do you change the display order? Yes, open favorites and right click, then select sort. Same as ie 8.Anonymous
September 20, 2010
@lkessler As far as I know, you're right that click-and-hold is new to Windows - but it's well established on mobile devices where it's the equivalent of right-click for stylus and touch interfaces. Now that touch and stylus are becoming more common ways to interact with Windows, it makes sense to introduce click-and-hold.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
One of the impediments to accessibility in IE9 is its problematic support for MathML in HTML5. See "MathML in HTML5: Internet Explorer 9 is Broken" www.dessci.com/.../MathMLinHTML5.htm.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
@PaulTopping We are aware of that issue and are looking into it.Anonymous
September 21, 2010
IE9 is looking REALLY good right now. My biggest issue with IE9 is just this: The 'find in page' system is really bad. The highlighting isn't all that great by itself. I'd hoped they'd have followed safari/opera in really highlighting the found text. I have to look & keep looking in the page to find what's actually supposed to be highlighted. It doesn't help that F3 doesn't seem to work as it's supposed to either. When I hit F3 I expect it to rotate through found items on current page, not just highlight the find dialog & just sit there :) The find dialog UI itself could be improved, I'm sure. It looks like a relic when placed where it is now. Thanks for a great browser! And hope for continued development even after release :)Anonymous
September 21, 2010
The drop downs in the DHTML menus on my websites do not work in IE9 Beta. Will this be fixed? Here's a link to one of my affected sites: http://vibroplex.comAnonymous
September 21, 2010
@Jim: Inside stmenu.js, swap var es=w.document.all(id); for var es=w.document.getElementById(id); Or remove the entire if (bIsIE) check immediately preceding it, and you'll find your page works just fine.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
Minimize, Restore, Close buttons don't work. I know it's beta, but really? I'm running Vista. Anyone else have this problem?Anonymous
September 22, 2010
There two accessibility problems with IE7/8 which I want fixed in IE9.
- The focus is often moved, either by accident or by IE itself perhaps, into the command bar or the toolabar
- Anonymous
September 22, 2010
There are two accessibility issues in IE7/8 which I want fixed in IE9. They are quite serious for everyday visually impaired users and have not been fixed in 5 years or more.
- The focus often jumps into the command bar or the IE toolbar or the Address Bar by itself. Perhaps the user presses tab before the page has loaded or perhaps IE sometimes moves the focus unexpectedly into the command/tool/address bars, who knows, but the thing is that focus often jumps unexpectedly into those regions and away from the main page's contents. For most unexperienced blind users the main page's contents are a well-known and familear area. They can navigate it using the cursor keys. Imagine their surprise when focus unexpectedly has jumped into the command/tool/address bars where the cursors do not work. For them to get back into the page's contents, they have to press tab or shift+tab 10, 15 or even 20 times, depending on how many extra add-on toolbars are installed. Some toolbars even, like the Bing Bar, trap the user inside them and even if you were to press tab 100 times you would stay trapped inside that toolbar and you would never get back into the page's contents. So, many visually impaired users load a page and then they find themselves into the command/tool/address bar and having to press tab many many times to get into the page they have just loaded so that they can navigate it using the cursors. And if you are an experienced blind user, you know about the command/tool/address bar. But many visually impaired users do not and thus they get so confused to hate IE. So, please pleease investigate this issue and either fix it, if it is an IE7/8 bug which makes the focus move into these areas and away from the main webpage's contents, or, if it is a user issue, add code which will move the focus back into the webpage as soon as a web site loads. This is what all users would want anyway. Nobody wants to load a site and find the focus in the command bar. They want to load a site and as soon as it has finished loading, to be able to navigate it using the cursors, i.e. have their screen reader's focus in the webpage itself and not in the IE chrome.
- To get to the Information/Notifications Bar, one has to press alt+n. This keyboard combination nobody knows it. If you want ask around in the blind community. Nobody knows about it and yet it is so so useful. The Information/Notifications Bar is such an important piece of UI and so the shortuct for getting to it should be more widely known, perhaps by advertising it more via a tooltip? Most importantly, when you get to the Information Bar by pressing alt+n, the user has to then press space to bring up the list of available choices, such as "Allow Pop-Ups from This Site", "Allow Download", etc. However, the more common key of enter does not work. So, even the visually impaired users who know about alt+n, would press it and then try to press enter to get to the choices to find that enter does not work. Very very few would think that they should instead press alt+n and then spacebar, before they can choose from a menu to allow a pop-up or a download. So, please improve this user experience. Look what Firefox for example does which offers different keyboard shortcuts based on the choices. At least fix it so that enter would also work instead of only space. This is this bug in the product for 5 years? Also pressing alt to dismiss a context menu opens the main application menu instead of dismissing the context menu as it does it all other Windows applications. Why?
Anonymous
September 22, 2010
You should maybe try IE9? ALT dismisses the context menu without a prompt. The "Notifications Prompt" works very differently than the old Information Bar and has individual buttons for individual commands. F6 moves between toolbars and the page.Anonymous
September 22, 2010
One thing that might be handy for screenreader users is an option to turn on a "working" or "navigating" sound that plays when the throbber is active. An "audio throbber" if you like. Sighted users can see that the browser is still working with the status bar and throbber and the state of the page. Screenreader users are dependent on their screenreader announcing progress and their noticing and understanding it. One of the frequent comments I get from my WebbIE users is "the navigating sound is really useful because it tells me when the page is still working". It would also help ameliorate the "tab out of the window by accident" problem - I suspect users are hitting tab to start exploring and find out what is going on when the browser doesn't appear to be doing anything and they think it is finished. You could turn the sound on by default if the SPI_GETSCREENREADER accessibility parameter is set. I wouldn't turn it on ever for WebBrowser controls, though. I suspect it'll conflict with some existing functionality of some screenreader or other, though, so you'll get some grief from those users, and the less-able users who could benefit from it probably won't have the means to contact you to say so. Ah, and throbbers are per-tab now: tricky. Do you only play the sound for the current tab? Then if you Ctrl+PageUp/Down to go through tabs you can hear the status of each tab as you go...Anonymous
September 23, 2010
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September 23, 2010
Screenreader will also have to be updated for Firefox 4 (mainly because tab aren't windows in Windows' window manager anymore), that's good since "A problem shared is a problem halved." :)Anonymous
September 24, 2010
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September 24, 2010
I have been using IE since the 3.x days and find the sudden change of the favorites location to be extremely disturbing. I found it extremely intuitive to have it right next to the address bar. is there some sort of way to make IE look like the classic IE? or is there a checkbox somewhere to move it to the other side permanently? Also I do not care that the menu bar is hidden by default. I STILL have not found the way to turn it on.Anonymous
September 26, 2010
Can anyone tell me how to get more than five addresses into the dropdown for sites to visit? I'm not finding a configuration for that and when I add new addresses they push the old ones out. Thanks, RJAnonymous
September 26, 2010
@RJ: The number of sites in the dropdown is not configurable. As you type, however, the sites listed will change to match what you've typed so far. @SeanB: IE9 Beta does not have a "classic" mode or a checkbox to move the favorites. It also does not have an option to turn on the menu bar at all times. @Will: We're looking at the UTF-8 email issue. thanks!Anonymous
September 26, 2010
Well I'm here to ask a simple tool: a button that serves to enable / disable the proxy settings. So when we do not want to use the proxy, only one click would be required to disable it. Firefox does not come with this function originally, but you can download it as an add-on. So far I have not found one of those for IE. It could be build-in on IE!Anonymous
September 26, 2010
In general, feeds in ie are easy to use for users of screen readers. However, if there is more than a small number of subscribed feeds, then it's tedious to read each one to find out if any of them have new content, by the word new being appended. A suggestion for improving this would be to have a keystroke in the feeds pane for moving to the next feed with new content. This would be similar to moving to the next unread email in an email program, and you could perhaps use the same keystroke, ctrl + u.Anonymous
September 26, 2010
@Salu: I wrote a proxy-picker add-on for IE a few years ago; you can find it here: www.enhanceie.com/.../proxypick.aspAnonymous
September 27, 2010
To use Microsoft Office Live, your computer must meet one of the following requirements: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8 running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the Internet Explorer page. Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. You can download Firefox from the Firefox download page. IE9Beta won't work with OFFICELIVE.COMAnonymous
September 27, 2010
To use Microsoft Office Live, your computer must meet one of the following requirements: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8 running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the Internet Explorer page. Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. You can download Firefox from the Firefox download page. IE9Beta won't work with OFFICELIVE.COMAnonymous
September 27, 2010
I have to say that if IE9 is released in its current layout I will be forced to look for a new browser. The changes to the layout are not at all intuitive and I am having so many problems on various websites I had to uninstall the beta. The worst one was not being able to use my online banking site. Losing the command bar was probably the worst part of the layout changes. Closely follwed by moving the favorites to the right side of the screen. Yuck! I am not opposed to change, but come on guys, lets make it a change for the better.Anonymous
September 28, 2010
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September 29, 2010
I have to uninstall Internet Explorer 9 Beta, it will not work with Narrator. It was nice to see it but I can't read the pages.I will not work it keeps jumping around.Anonymous
September 29, 2010
Ican't install IE9 and not able work with narrator while reading it keeps jumpedout.Anonymous
September 29, 2010
no comment pl.Anonymous
September 30, 2010
Sir, I have downloaded IE9 in vista home premium but always i open it it shows INTERNET EXPLORER HAR STOPED WORKING ...........I have tried to uninstall and re installed it but it doesnt work still.........................Give me a solurion please.Anonymous
October 01, 2010
I do not see any updates on the expansion of the single select / dropdown / html select-one. There have been many complaints that this element cuts off text that spills over the dropdown width. This is a software developer nightmare! Firefox has this feature a very long time ago, why can't IE?Anonymous
October 01, 2010
I dont know if its a bug or feature, but if you click and hold the left mouse button, mouse over a link, and then unclick, the browser will follow the link you were over. It's a problem if you are just trying to highlight some text and happen to unclick over a link.Anonymous
October 03, 2010
Well, I give up. It is not obvious to me where "find in page" went. A browser is not very usable is there is not an obvious, easy find-in-page function. It must be there someplace.Anonymous
October 04, 2010
@Bill K- B: Tools-File-Find on this page or ctrl-f (same as IE8)