Accessibility: speech no longer reports articulations and ornaments

• Feb 4, 2019 - 13:24
Reported version
3.0
Type
Functional
Frequency
Many
Severity
S3 - Major
Reproducibility
Always
Status
closed
Regression
No
Workaround
No
Project

A regression in v3.0.1 and above is that articulations and ornaments are no longer announced automatically by a screen reader.

Steps:

  1. Run a screen reader such as NVDA.

  2. Create a new score: single line, treble clef will do, but any score type will show the problem.

  3. Enter Note Edit mode (N).

  4. Enter some notes, e.g. C, D, E, F, G crotchet.

  5. 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.

  6. 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 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).

-
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.

Status PR created fixed

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._

Fix version
3.3.0