Gitlab Accessibility For The Blind

Description

Customer has requested new features to improve accessibility for visually impaired software engineers.

Proposal

As requested by customer:

On several of my projects at work I am using Gitlab with the Gitlab server software version 9.3.5. From the linux command line I am successfully cloning projects, switching between branches of a project, and checking in new changes to a project with a commit and push.

For a windows PC a blind person uses a screen reader such as Jaws for Windows. I am using JAWS 16 from Freedom Scientific www.freedomscientific.com as my screen reader and am using Internet Explorer 11. Some of the web-interface features of Gitlab seem hard to use as a blind person.

I am interested in effectively using 3 features of the Gitlab server. These include: issue management, code review, and workplace messaging for PC's known as Mattersmost. Please let me know if there is a command line alternative on a linux machine for performing these tasks. For issue management, I wish to review a list of issues pertaining to a project, create a new issue, create a branch for an issue, and initiate a merge request for a specified branch. The tab order does not seem correct for making a new issue on a project. From the project name I had to tab 15 times to land the link for selecting a new feature.

For code review, I wish to use nonvisual techniques in order to review comments on a merge request, post comments, change the state of a comment to resolved, and create comments on a merge request. Note that creating comments on a set of files seems to require highlighting a block of lines in a particular file of the project and then filling in an edit box with a particular comment. If I wish to input a particular file and a range of line numbers, how might I do this without using the mouse? It would be most convenient if the Gitlab server accepted an ASCII .csv file format for creating comments on a merge request. Some of the columns might be file, start line number, end line number, and comment. The .csv file format would allow for multiple line comments. A method for submitting multiple comments in a single .csv file would be most effective. For using the message board Mattersmost, I wish to use nonvisual techniques to post a message to a channel and to review all messages on a channel.

Links / references

ZD: https://gitlab.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/80967

Documentation blurb

Accessibility features for visually impaired / blind software engineers.

Overview

What is it?

  • Accessibility features for visually impaired / blind software engineers.

Why should someone use this feature?

  • To contribute without the requirement of mouse/keyboard and to integrate with 3rd party accessibility tools.

What is the underlying (business) problem?

  • A small group of visually impaired software engineers are unable to contribute due to lack of accessibility.

How do you use this feature?

  • (described in proposal)

Use cases

Who is this for? Provide one or more use cases.

  • A small group of accessibility professionals and a small group of blind users who would benefit from being able to access core GitLab features.

Feature checklist

Make sure these are completed before closing the issue, with a link to the relevant commit.