Notebook UX for screen readers.

[tgeorgeux]

I'm opening a separate issue from #4878 to focus on what is required for screen reader in the notebook specifically. Specifically how to navigate or interact with a notebook. After much discussion at the web4all Hackathon in San Francisco last week we've settled on a prototype idea for how a screen reader can browse through a notebook. We're looking at treating each cell in a notebook as a 'row' and populating 4 'columns'. The columns would be: Cell Collapse Button, Cell #, Input Cell of a cell, output of the cell. In the case of markdown or cells with no output column 4 would exist for consistency of navigation but be empty. This would allow users to browse though a notebook, surface the context menu to perform actions in the input cells and quickly navigate around the notebook. See the image below for a visual representation of the gird.

We also toyed around with the idea of a 'read through' mode that would hide collapsers and prompts to quickly orient to the notebook contents.

[SamKacer]

I just came to check in on how accessibility is coming along. I am happy to see some activity around it. Having raised issue #4878, I am still very much interested in Jupyter Lab's accessibility. Even more so, since I am entering a software engineering job where data science might be a major interest.

Once this proposed prototype is developed, I would be more than happy to test it manually for usability and report back.Please let me know!

[tonyfast]

@tgeorgeux is this superceded by #9399

[tgeorgeux]

I think this is answers some of the "How" with regards to "Why/What" presented in #9399 . This proposes a way to implement the tab order within the notebook for ease of navigation.