Accessibility Issues

Hello Dan And Everybody
First of all, I should thank Dan for the very nice plugin he has designed. I believe it still lacks two very important features:1- SMS 2- Using Woocommerce payment gateways for paying Sprout Invoices. It needs some other features too, but I think it is very close to my ideal. I have been searching for a good invoicing plugin recently for a few months. I have tested almost all available billing and invoicing plugins, as far as I could find. Among all of them, I suppose Sprout Invoices, in spite of some technical comments I have to raise about, is currently the best, because it is very much similar to my expectations and requirements. That is why I am writing this accessibility review about SP Invoices only, not about other plugins; because I feel Sprout Invoices is worth more development and attention; although I am not sure yet if I will be able to use it.

I started investigating and testing the free version of Sprout Invoices a few days ago. I am blind and I use screen reader software (JAWS and NVDA) for reading everything. Fortunately, WordPress follows accessibility standards very strictly and, unlike Joomla, it is very much concerned about the people with special needs. WordPress even added “Accessible Mode” option to its “Widgets Page Settings”, so to make it usable by the blind. Sprout Invoices plugin is also accessible to a great extent, but it has a few accessibility issues:

The Two Most Important Problems:
1- Auto-Complete Drop-Down Menus: Some comboboxes are regular comboboxes, but some others are auto-complete drop-down menus. For example, the “Client-Selection Combobox” and “user-Selection Combobox” in all pages (New Invoice, Edit Invoice, New Estimate, Edit Estimate, New Client, Edit Client) are drop-down comboboxes. The regular comboboxes are completely accessible, but the auto-complete comboboxes are not accessible with JAWS or NVDA in Firefox. They are accessible in IE, but it is very bothering to switch from FX to IE only for reading a combobox. I tested them with two latest versions of JAWS (16 and 17) and two latest versions of NVDA, but neither one could read it in FX. I would very much prefer to have a regular combobox instead of those auto-complete comboboxes. I believe those regular ones are much easier to use.

2- Expandable Links: In “New Invoice Page”, or “Edit Invoice Page” there is an expandable link for adding new items. When we click on the link, 3 types of items are suggested: new task, new service and new goods or something like that. JAWS does not read those 3 links. Only NVDA reads them. It is hard to keep switching from FX to IE and from JAWS to NVDA. FX is better than IE and JAWS is better than NVDA. I would like to have 3 links with keyboard shortcuts instead of one expandable link. It would be more ideal if I had 3 buttons with keyboard shortcuts, because finding buttons with screen reader is easier than finding links. I suppose, “Add New Item” link is the most frequently used object in this plugin; so it must be very accessible, quick and user-friendly.

There are two other minor issues too:
3- Clickable Items: In “New Invoice Page” or “Edit Invoice Page”, when we want to enter the tax amount, we are not able to change it from “percent” to “amount”, because JAWS and NVDA are not able to change that clickable item. That item needs to be changed into a radio-button or combobox or something.

4- Lack Of Checkboxes In Payments List: In all list-tables (such as the list of clients and the list of invoices), there are checkboxes beside each item. Those checkboxes are very helpful, because we can find them with JAWS and NVDA by pressing X. They help us find the list items very easily. If you don’t contrive those checkboxes, we will have to read all the list items and all their links and options for finding our desired item. The lists of clients and invoices are perfect, but in the list of payments, we find no checkbox beside the items.

Best Regards