Hello,
I’m using Vantage (pro), PageBuilder, and MetaSlider. When you embed MetaSlider in a widget (in order to put it on a PageBuilder page), there is a problem with accessibility. I”ve submitted this to MetaSlider people as well but since MetaSlider is essentially part of the Vantage theme and you are the developers of PageBuilder, I thought I’d let you know.
MetaSlider, by itself – not embedded in a widget – is ok for accessibility. It creates a list of the images for a screen reader to view. However, when it is embedded in a widget (like a text widget or visual editor widget), it only lists one item (whichever one is currently visible on the rotation). If a screen reader user scrolls up and down the page, this description changes based on the currently visible slide.
Although this isn’t perhaps enormous, I”m wondering if it really isn’t that hard to fix given that it works fine when embedded using the standard visual editor….
Hi leslieg
Thanks for reporting this. Can you perhaps re-test in a regular widget area and check the result. So does the same thing happen when embedding a Meta Slider via a Text widget in the sidebar or footer widget area?
Thanks for your reply. I have my screen reader guy testing the standard widget areas.
An aside:
Interesting thing tho, in terms of displaying the slider: When embedding the slider in a text widget in the footer or sidebar, we get no display except [metaslider id=45]
As mentioned earlier, when we embed metaslider in the text widget in a Page Builder row, the slider shows up.
I realized something was not clear.
We are testing two things.
1. A Visual Editor Widget plugin called “Black Studio TinyMCE Widget”
2. The standard WP text widget.
Both have the same problem on Page Builder pages so it’s not limited to the visual editor plugin.
We are now testing the visual editor plugin in the sidebar and footer as you asked. We can’t test the text widget in sidebar and footer because it doesn’t display as a slider.
Turns out the slider isn’t working in the visual editor widget after all. Unlike the text widget, it does show a picture but it doesn’t rotate – the same slider used elsewhere does rotate.
In any case, this is what the screen reader returned (although this was sort of accurate since there was only one image showing). But the results are similar to those using widgets inside pagebuilder.
list of 1 items
tall tower
list end
complementary information end
The results were this same under four conditions:
Jaws15 with IE11
Jaws15 with Firefox
NVDA-2014.3 with IE 11
NVDA-2014.3 with Firefox
Metaslider widget itself works visually in both Pagebuilder and regular areas like footer and sidebar but same problem with listing only one image for screenreader.
Thanks for all the testing and feedback. I’m sure it’ll come in handy down the line. The reason that I asked you test in the sidebar is this allows us to isolate the problem. Meta Slider not giving the results your require when entered into the Visual Editor widget in a sidebar widget area means the problem starts before Page Builder. Meta Slider would unfortunately need to check this out. Sorry I don’t have a fix from our side.
Thanks Andrew – I appreciate your trying to help. It makes sense that this isn’t a pagebuilder problem to fix.
I’m hoping that SiteOrigin can make a request of the makers of the MetaSlider to address the problem given that the slider is an integral part of the Vantage product. We’ve committed to using Vantage Pro and now we’ve gotten this negative accessibility report and my project is left wondering what to do. I’ve also submitted a ticket to the MetaSlider Pro developers. I actually have heard back from the accessibility guy and I think he’s telling me that it actually doesn’t meet requirements even on the home page but I need to verify that.
Anyway, if you could pass that request up the chain, I’d appreciate it. The association of the slider with Vantage means that you all may be hearing about this again.
Thanks for the additional feedback and information. We’ll be sure to mention this. Hopefully it’ll be looked at in a future version of the plugin.