screen reader accessibility for UI

[RealAmethyst]

The UI is currently not accessible with screen readers like Narrator or NVDA, could this please be looked into. I am not sure if this app works with keyboard alone for stuf like the alt menu and similar, as no speech via screen reader.

[Anoop-j-s]

This might be related to accessibility support in the UI.

A few things that could help:

• Ensure UI elements have proper accessibility labels (like aria-label, role attributes)
• Check if keyboard navigation is fully supported (tab, arrow keys, etc.)
• Screen readers like NVDA depend on proper semantic structure

If this is a Windows app, it may also require UI Automation support for screen readers to detect elements.

You could test with accessibility inspection tools to identify missing properties.

Hope this helps!

[YoshiRulz]

Last I heard it was working. What version of Windows and EmuHawk are you using?
For context, we've done nothing towards screen reader support, as it's provided by WinForms, our UI toolkit. (I did write one extra thing on top of that, but with no Windows machine I never tested it, and I don't think anyone else did either and that mostly works.)

[RealAmethyst]

so I am on windows 11 and latest release build and I open it, and get this

I am unable to do anything, no keyboard navigation, scren reader doesn't say anything either.

[SuuperW]

Some bugs regarding menu navigation have been fixed since the last release. In 2.11 you can access menus by pressing Alt+F (or Alt+E, etc). That's pressing F while alt is held.

You can download a dev build at https://nightly.link/TASEmulators/BizHawk/workflows/ci/master/BizHawk-dev-windows.zip (got this link from the readme).

[YoshiRulz]

Method 1: Exit Narrator, press Alt+F, start Narrator, then press any arrow key to sync its focus.
Method 2: Leaving Narrator on, either press CapsLock+R, or switch to scan mode with CapsLock+Space and press CapsLock+LeftArrow repeatedly. (You're in the status bar.) When you hear "File menu item", open it with CapsLock+Enter.
gl;hf

minor rant

So I started my Win11 VM and launched Narrator from the Start menu, expecting to spend an hour learning keyboard navigation. That wasn't the case! But not for any good reasons.
There's an onboarding window when you launch Narrator for the first time, and the first option was "QuickStart", so of course I clicked that. Narrator was speaking and I intended to listen and not look. The first page tells you how to start and stop, then says to press Enter on the continue button. (It doesn't tell you how to focus that button, but it's the last control on the page so you end up there anyway. WTF #0.) Enter gets me... nothing. The button is still focused? But it's actually a different button because I'm on the next page. It just didn't jump to the top of the page, nor announce the change in any way. WTF #1.
I finished the rest of the tutorial, which covers navigation by words/letters, paragraphs, and something called 'landmarks', how to use text input and other input controls, and window management. I feel like I wasn't given the whole picture in that tutorial, so I went back and checked the "complete guide" and it's just this lacklustre set of MSDN pages, which I imagine would be painful to trawl through without sight. WTF #2.
At this point I was sick of the default voice so I went to change it. The "legacy" options sound like they haven't changed since Win95. Most of the "natural" options have that uncanny rasping that I can't stand, as well as the hallmark stilted intonation of TTS. WTF #3. There are 2 "natural HD" options: the en-US male isn't much better, and the en-US female is fine, but more importantly they were 250 MiB DLs so I ignored them and chose the least-bad "natural" en-GB. (Also, not that I care, but there were no "natural" en-AU or en-IE options despite having "legacy" options for those.)
One of the other settings is "Sync the Narrator cursor and system focus". It's checked, but when I scroll, the box stays where it is on the screen instead of moving with the focused control. WTF #4.
Time to try it on EmuHawk. I have 2.3.2 for checking regressions like this. It's announced as "OpenTK native window wind- BizHawk window". (CapsLock+Tab announces the PresentationPanel as "pane", which after this ordeal I can relate to.) After some flailing, I figure out multiple ways to reach the menu, but the experience is not what I'd call "smooth".
How about 2.11.1 dev? It's announced correctly now. Still says pain, lmao. Still not snapping to any controls unless I use scan mode. And the onboarding toast isn't announced :(

The status bar being first suggests it's using the order of Form.Controls, which also makes it an easy fix.
I'm not sure if we have access to 'landmarks'. I also don't know if there's the will to go adding them to every tool; it feels like time that would be better spent on refactoring those to responsive layouts.

[RealAmethyst]

Okay I tried that build, still no speech, I even verified that keyboard navigation does work, as if I press Alt and go one down and press enter it opens the rom select dialog, so keyboard works, but not the reader. I did try alt+F as well with no luck. There is someone that has added support for screen readers somewhat with a forke, but they used AI to code it in so not sure if it could be merged here, but I really wish this could be added. I use NVDA screen reader, the forke is here if you want to take a look at it: https://github.com/Lethal-Lawnmower/BizHawk