Blind users cannot swipe the playback track bar slider control that sighted users can drag back and forth

Plex Players Mobile Devices
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When VoiceOver is enabled on iOS on both the iPhone and Ipad for the visually impaired, it is impossible to use the swipe up and down gesture as directed to move the slider control that will incrementally scroll playback backwards or forwards.

From what I can tell, the underlying code for the player is wrapped in a web control, so the slider widget is actually configured as an ARIA Slider (Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.2).

Though the implementation of the slider role and supporting attributes is correct, it is missing the latest support for enabling VoiceOver support for blind users to access the swipe functionality for the widget.

In the past, it was always impossible for swipe gestures to work correctly when using VoiceOver on web-based slider controls that were JavaScript driven, because there was no way for the accessibility API to predict the functionality of the slider when the gesture was used.

Earlier this year however, Apple, in collaboration with Google and Mozilla, implemented a workaround solution for doing this in Webkit, allowing for the assigned keyboard handlers for onKeyDown to automatically be triggered when this gesture is used on iOS devices when VoiceOver is enabled for the blind.

As a result, when correctly implemented, you can now swipe up and down with one finger when VoiceOver is running to move the slider back and forth to ensure accessibility for blind users.

You can see examples of this here:
Accessible horizontal slider: Horizontal ARIA Slider - 4X Technical Style Guide
Accessible vertical slider: Vertical ARIA Slider - 4X Technical Style Guide

The problem with the player slider in Plex however, is that the onKeyDown handler is missing, which needs to be configured to recognize the same keystrokes that should be configured on a desktop slider for accessible keyboard support to move the slider as directed. (WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.2)

If you could please correct this, it would help a lot of your users by making this more accessible for everyone.

Sincerely,
Bryan Garaventa

1 Like
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Thanks for your report and sorry it’s not working correctly! I filed an issue to track this.

Just to be sure, you’re using the Plex for iOS app and not Plexamp or the web player? I ask since we don’t use a web wrapper around our player and just wanted to make sure there’s not an issue in an additional app.

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Thanks, yes indeed, it is the native Plex app for iOS. If using the native dev environment, it should be possible to tie into the accessibility API features to enable this functionality more readily.

All the best,
Bryan

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