A couple of weeks ago, we had the new Firefox breaking the accessibility under WinEyes. It is well known, from version 56 and up, Firefox will no longer operate with WinEyes.
Someone kindly pointed us to the business - or ESR - version of firefox, at the time being version 52. I followed their advice, and installed it, greatly enjoying to have my Firefox back on stage. This morning, Firefox notified me there was a security update to my installation. In other words, no new version, just a maintenence update. Hence, I agreed to have it perform the update. Yeah, I take it, you have already guessed what. From now on, my Firefox says version 52.5, and is no longer doable with WinEyes. It no longer goes into the programs Main Window, but says Document Window. Here you can tab around, but the arrow keys produces no real effect, and browse mode is reported to be: Not Available. Oh, how I hate that message. Smiles. OK, if anyone have seen different behavior, or have got to a bit of knowledge on how to get Firefox back, we are all ears. To me, it seems Firefox simply has crept out of all cooperation with our screen reader. Little do I hold it realistic it will ever come back. Some place, I seem to recently have read, that someone from the NVDA team had gone to Mozilla. It then is strange that we are facing this kind of lack of accessibility. It even states, under Help and About, that Firefox is meant to make the web accessible to everyone. I guess, that means except from old-timers with their WinEyes. Smiles and LOL. For some, Chrome might be an alternative. The rest of us, will be back to Internet Explorer. Chrome has its benefits, but so far I have had issues with it under certain operations. Following NVDA discussions lately, even that screen reader seem to have high issues with the newest firefox releases. It is being claimed, things will get better in version 58, but to what extent that will affect WinEyes, I am doubtful. And a recent note I read from VFO, on Jaws, seemed to indicate that even Jaws users are experiencing trouble with Mozilla lately. It was recommended not to use Firefox with Jaws 2018, if I remember correctly. Currently, I am not on that version of Jaws, so cannot confirm. Anyone here has had a chance to test newest releases of the screen reader and browser together? Goodbye to a long-lasting browser, which had numerous and beneficial advantages over any other products. Along with the somehow old-fashioned way of operating the web with Jaws - which to a degree reminds me of where WinEyes was a handful of years ago, the whole Internet browsing experience now seem to be a setback. Sure is going to take a bit of time, to get back to normal browsing speed. Sure, they made it secure? Didn't they. So secure you can't even use it. That is another kind of safety. Well, seems not even sighted users are comfortable with the newest moves from Mozilla. Probably why they tell the next release (58) will have some advancements. Does it remind you of what happened to things like Windows8, and the fact they had to go back on certain of the news, when releasing next versions? So maybe we should not wave totally goodbye to Mozilla all yet. I just wish they would have a setting somewhere, which would let the browser run the old way, even if they make some security adjustments behind the scene. Just wanted to let you know my findings. If anyone have ideas, I for one will be listening. For your info, I am under Win7 64bit, and the Firefox is reported as v52.5ESR 32bit. _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
