Plexamp accessibility

Plex Labs
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I’m sure this wasn’t a consideration during design and development of this app, but it is sorely lacking basic accessibility features for anyone with visual and other disabilities. I’d love to someday be able to recommend a replacement for Foobar2000 to colleagues with disabilities, but it remains a leader in the a11y space.

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Would you be willing to list some of the missing features for accessibility? I am not very familiar with this area.

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Yes. Please let us know what Foobar2000 has that would allow for more people to enjoy Plexamp.

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Two that jump right out:

  • Keyboard Trap (WCAG 2.1.2) - On launch, no keyboard operation of the app is possible (I’ve tried various things like Enter, Space, Escape). Expected behavior is that Enter should play the currently active track without any other intervention (as in foobar2000). I have to first click in the app with the mouse to activate keyboard tabbing through the controls. Failing 2.1.2 effectively makes the app inaccessible to users who are limited to keyboard devices due to motor disabilities.
  • No Visible Focus (WCAG 2.4.7) - The app lacks any visible indicator of where you are in the tab order as you tab through the controls. Keyboard-only users rely on visual indicators to know what control has current focus.

I can make a more comprehensive list when I have time, but these are quick pot-shots.

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This is great. Keep the list coming. Here are a few keyboard shortcuts:

“next”: “MediaNextTrack”,
“playpause”: “MediaPlayPause”,
“previous”: “MediaPreviousTrack”,
“activate”: “Shift+CommandOrControl+Space”,
“unrate”: “Shift+Command+Control+Option+0”,
“rate1”: “Shift+Command+Control+Option+1”

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Thanks for the info! FYI something like MediaPlayPause is not an accessible keyboard shortcut because most assistive devices won’t have those specialized buttons.

A couple other issues I saw this morning:

  • Error detection on forms (WCAG 3.3.1) - The search form doesn’t provide a meaningful error message when the input isn’t valid
  • Error suggestion (WCAG 3.3.3) - Meaningful suggestions aren’t provided to address an error.

In other words, the “All that you seek is already within you”, while funny, will be frustrating to a user with a cognitive disability who’s trying to understand why their search isn’t effective.

Thanks for being open to reading these. To be fair there’s a lot more “right” than there is wrong and if I was presenting you a comprehensive accessibility audit, most of the validation checkpoints would pass. I’m just pointing out the critical failures so you can decide if you want to address them.

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Hi, I see that another update went by without mention of accessibility. Is it in the roadmap to address some of these issues?

I’m an accessibility professional and I know many Foobar users who would welcome other options and I’d love to be able to recommend this. Is accessibility on the roadmap?

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