Update Accessibility Statement

[gabalafou]

To my eyes, this statement is still current for JupyterLab 4, so I made a few tweaks so that it doesn't seem to only be addressing version 3.

I also made a few edits and moved the link to the CZI grant roadmap to the "Links" section.

The background/motivation for this PR is a comment Mike wrote on April 19, 2024:

I see that accessibility section is in there: https://jupyterlab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started/accessibility.html
It looks a bit outdated, showing 2022 date and JupyterLab 3.4.4. Are there plans to update it going forward?

-- #14396 (comment):

[jupyterlab-probot]

Thanks for making a pull request to jupyterlab!
To try out this branch on binder, follow this link:

[gabalafou]

I'm not really sure this document belongs under "Get Started" - should we move it somewhere else while keeping the old URL alive?

[krassowski]

I'm not really sure this document belongs under "Get Started" - should we move it somewhere else while keeping the old URL alive?

Well I think that it is fine; it includes things which a potential user or operator should know before installing/deploying JupyterLab. I think we should have a separate section under "User Guide" which talks about how a user/operator can enable accessibility options such as the High Contrast Theme and suggests specific customizations that may be preferred for users with accessibility needs (maybe changing some shortcuts, maybe increasing font size by default, maybe adding some buttons, all depending on what a user needs).

[krassowski]

JupyterLab is not compatible with

Browsers (mobile and desktop):
Internet Explorer
Edge

JupyterLab is compatible with Edge 79 and newer. It is not compatible with Edge <79. This needs to be updated, Edge is like 13% of the market share and as of now it is wrongly saying they would need to switch browsers to use JupyterLab.

[krassowski]

Is it still accurate that JupyterLab is not compatible with any of the screen readers after the substantial number of PRs improving specific areas? What does it mean to be compatible, is it like 100% elements work as user would expect (where expectations will vary user-to-user) or that most things can be done with a screen reader?

[krassowski]

JupyterLab is nonconforming with WCAG 2.1 level AA.

From PoV of maintaining this we should have a list of issues remaining to meet AA. I know this is partially related to automated testing and partially to issue tracking. Maybe we should have two separate labels in in issue tracker, one for AA and one for AAA. Of top of my head I don't know of major areas where AA is not met, but certainly there are many smaller issues remaining.

[tonyfast]

i dont think notebook 7 was an idea when this accessibility statement was posted. i think that the accessibility statement should be update to recommend notebook 7 as our most accessible authoring system for assistive technology users. for assistive technology, it is the least confusing situation to work in.

i think it would be worth noting improvements to low vision zoom modes. low vision/magnifier users will have a better experience notebook 7 over jupyterlab. low vision mode makes more sense notebook cause of the application doesnt take up real estate on the margins.

Of top of my head I don't know of major areas where AA is not met, but certainly there are many smaller issues remain.

there are some forms that are definitely going to fail wcag AA at this moment, but otherwise several issues were handled that we had before.

From PoV of maintaining this we should have a list of issues remaining to meet AA. I know this is partially related to automated testing and partially to issue tracking. Maybe we should have two separate labels in in issue tracker, one for AA and one for AAA.

it can be hard to separate these AA/AAA at times, especially with wcag 2.0/2.1. wcag 2.2 disambiguated some of these confusions, but our targets are not modern standards. a lot of the contributions we've recieved for accessibility have been towards compliance of section 508 which requires satisfying wcag 2.0 AA. i'd suggest:

• drop the 2.1 constraint to 2.0. we mention lab is NOT section 508 compliant to wcag 2.0 AA. this would indicate to institutions that lab is not compliant with federal standards for access to information technology.
• we should triage past audits and see where we stand. there are multiple checklists that should be verified about the state they are in. after this effort we'd be in a better place to track the issue progress.
• we use funds to pay for a formal audit of jupyter notebook and actively work to redress the inaccessibility.

[krassowski]

I realise that I commented but have not used the GitHub review feature before - this is because it does not allow to use code reviews on things outside of the diff.
I would appreciate if the points raised in the discussion were addressed, in particular the Edge browser issue, and otherwise just an acknowledgement for the other points raised (seeing Isabela's review I suspect it was possibly discussed on accessibility meeting - sorry I could not make it this week, I'm off sick, but even if things are discussed in meetings it helps future selves a lot of those are briefly summarised on the PRs).