Screen reader can't read content on node-webkit app

Question

We're using node-webkit for packaging an app made with HTML5 and js. Everything has been working well but now when we try to read the content using a screen reader (Apple VoiceOver or Jaws), the content seems inaccessible.

The screen reader is able to read the window's buttons and the window's title but can't read the HTML inside the app. Actually it doesn't work with the sample page that came out of the box with node-webkit so is not a problem of our app.

Any ideas or alternatives? Thanks!

Answer 1

Each platform (OS) like Windows, OS X and Linux(es) (and Android and iOS and countless others on mobile) has its own accessibility API. For example Windows Automation API on Windows 7 and 8 (open source softwares use IAccessible2 but it seems to be a useful extra layer to it. Whatever)

• A software like a browser must communicate with the OS what it is doing via this API (it could be an email client, a spreadsheet, a file explorer, etc).
• The OS will filter (examples: if it's not the active window, if a system thing happens like removal of a USB key or new notification)
• This accessibility API will then inform assistive technologies (AT) like a screen reader (SR) of what's happening. A SR being a complex software with user configuration, it'll also filter, adapt, output via a speech synthesis and/or a Braille display, etc from what it was fed.

Though I'm only accustomed to web accessibility and not in anything related to software, browsers, APIs and their internal working (so I could be very wrong, sorry) I guess the communication related to accessibility from "WebKit" to the OS (and there's "WebKit" on Windows, OS X, maybe still Linux, etc) is managed by Chrome the software (and vanilla Chromium the software from Chromium the project), NOT WebKit the rendering engine. node-webkit is made around Chromium but does it pass along the messages related to accessibility API? If it does or can, you should have the same accessibility as in Chromium (good luck with that, compared to Firefox and IE). If it doesn't, that's a black box.
One would then need to add all this accessibility API management to make it work! Maybe it's just an option in node-webkit?

If you want to verify if anything goes out of a software related to an accessibility API, you can test with aViewer from The Paciello Group.

May be related: Blink accessibility (Chromium project)