Accessibility: speech no longer reports articulations and ornaments
A regression in v3.0.1 and above is that articulations and ornaments are no longer announced automatically by a screen reader.
Steps:
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Run a screen reader such as NVDA.
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Create a new score: single line, treble clef will do, but any score type will show the problem.
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Enter Note Edit mode (N).
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Enter some notes, e.g. C, D, E, F, G crotchet.
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Either use keyboard shortcuts or palette to add articulation or ornaments to some of the notes.
e.g. pressShift+S for staccato, Shift+V for accent, or add turn or trill from palette etc. -
Cursor along the music (Left/Right) and notice the speech does not announce the added articulations or ornaments.
Note: this is a regression from MuseScore 2.3.2. It may be a related problem to #281448 Accessibility: Next Element and Previous Element shortcuts ignore articulations
Using Windows 10, MuseScore 3.0.1 and 3.0.2. NVDA screen reader.
Comments
Indeed. To me, I think the expected behavior is that the articulation would not be read when you reach the note, only when you actually reach the articulation, but currently this never happens. I don't have a screenreader to test with, but I assume this would be consistent with other markings? For instance, fingerings or lyrics don't get read any more when you visit the note?
In reply to Indeed. To me, I think the… by Marc Sabatella
Hi Mark,
Many thanks for your comment:
It's really a question of discoverability and a possibly negative change from the way MuseScore 2.3 works.
Ideally, when you cursor onto a note with ordinary Cursor Left/Right, you need to hear everything about that note, including whether there are articulations, ornaments, dynamics, lyrics, figured bass etc, etc. Then, with the Next Element command you can go through the individual elements that make up the note as a whole.
E.g.
Press Right and MuseScore might say, for example:
Note F4 crotchet, dynamic mp, articulation staccato, lyric Good
Then, with the Alt+Right, I should be able to navigate individually to the dynamic, the lyric, and the articulation.
I have just tried making a short test piece including dynamics and lyrics and these are still spoken when you cursor Left/Right. I was unable to test fingering, because that involves using the palette which is not yet fully accessible to me (separate issue).
Note also that I think the problem not announcing the articulations and ornaments is related to not being able to navigate onto the same (the other bug I mentioned in initial report).
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If I can use another analogy:
in an ordinary word processor, if you press Cursor Up/Down, the screen reader will read every word on the line you land on. Then when you Cursor Left/Right, it will read the individual character you land on.
The analogy I think can fit MuseScore: when you press Left/Right you land on a whole new note and all the attributes and things connected with it should be read; then if you Alt+Left/Right, then you should read each individual attribute.
I hope this helps.
With best regards,
James.
In reply to Hi Mark, Many thanks for… by JamesBowden
Ok, thanks for the feedback. I think we either got the opposite feedback from others which is why we made the change, or else we misinterpreted it.should be easy enough to change back if there is consensus on this.
Btw, you can define a shortcut to add fingering.
https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/5221
This PR implements both desired behaviors for articulations: they are read with the note, and the navigation commands will find them individually as well.
Note that I couldn't test the screenreader portion of the change but I think it should be good.
Fixed in branch master, commit 320c1081e4
_fix #281448, fix #283463: accessibility for articulations and lyrics
Articulations needed to be added to Chord::accessibleExtraInfo.
Also, refactoring was needed to move code around as a result of
articulations and fermatas being moved between Chord and ChordRest._
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.