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console-rs / dialoguer

Rust utility library for nice command line prompts and similar things
MIT License
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screen reader support in select and multiselect. #149

Open alex19EP opened 3 years ago

alex19EP commented 3 years ago

to improve accessibility of select and multi select widgets a terminal cursor should be set at entries which currently highlighted with "❯".

this will greatly improve the usability of applications which depends on this library for blind people.

thank you.

pksunkara commented 3 years ago

@alex19EP Can you please go into more details? And have you audited the other prompts too? I am afraid I don't know anything about this.

alex19EP commented 3 years ago

@alex19EP Can you please go into more details?

ok. screen reader are a program which reads with a speech synthesizer or outputs wire braille display information from the screen, this allows blind people to use the computer.

what is important in our case, the screen reader can read the terminal by lines and symbols, as well as pronounce the information that appears, however, when the program has a menu or dialog with several buttons, then the screen reader needs to somehow find out which menu item or button is currently selected. the cursor is used for this, the screen reader will read the line or character pointed to by the cursor.

this crait uses the ❯ symbol to indicate the selected item. if, together with this symbol, the terminal cursor is placed on the selected object, then the screen reader will be able to voice which object is currently selected.

And have you audited the other prompts too? I am afraid I don't know anything about this.

are there any other prompts where multiple selections are available?

pksunkara commented 3 years ago

Yeah, there is a sort prompt. I am not sure how normal select prompt works too in this situation. Which is why I would appreciate if you would audit all the prompts thoroughly.

alex19EP commented 3 years ago

ok will look at it tomorrow.

alex19EP commented 2 years ago

normal select works as I described above, but I cannot understand how multi select works. I see a ✔ symbol in front of each element. this is normal it can be read by a screen reader, but I do not see an indication of the selected item, maybe it is marked with a color? also I can’t understand how the status is shown about whether the item is selected. the ✔ symbol does not change when pressing the space bar and enter confirms selection.

for sort I see the same problems. it is not clear how the selected element is indicated, as well as sorting.

pksunkara commented 2 years ago

but I do not see an indication of the selected item, maybe it is marked with a color?

Yeah, it is marked with color. Known issue #114

alex19EP commented 2 years ago

OK. first, we need to show the cursor in all prompts where there is a choice of several elements, and then we can figure out how to present the data in a form accessible to screen readers.

p.s. can I somehow change the theme in the examples? I want to see how a not colored theme is rendered.

pksunkara commented 2 years ago

Try the simple theme instead of the colored theme. You should be able to see it in docs.rs