Automated accessibility testing at Slack
slack.engineering
slack.engineering
We publish the engine (axe-core) and the "core" playwright integration library Slack is using (@axe-core/playwright) as open source, but if you're interested in what the Slack team has described in this blog, we also have a paid offering called axe Developer Hub (https://www.deque.com/axe/developer-hub) that offers a similar workflow to what the Slack folks describe here: It hooks into end-to-end tests you already have to add in accessibility testing without needing a ton of code changes to your test suite.
It's very enlightening to see which features the Slack folks prioritized for their setup and to see some of the stuff they were able to do by going deep on integration with Playwright specifically. It's not often you are lucky enough to get feedback as strong as "we cared about <feature> enough to invest a bunch of engineering time into it".
If you're interested in building these sort of accessibility tools, my team is hiring! https://www.deque.com/careers/senior-accessibility-tool-deve...
And if you are willing to answer some other questions regarding axe-core itself, I might have few.
If you have general questions about axe-core, the best place to ask is our axe Community slack instance (https://accessibility.deque.com/axe-community). If you have a specific issue you'd like us to investigate, try https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core/issues
It's amazing how much a screenshot will do for my motivation to fix a frontend bug. Visually identifying severity is much easier than reading and making a mental judgement.
I'm sure other tools are great too but I find Cleanshot on macOS makes it super convenient to do it, so there's no excuse not to document reports with images and/or videos.
I do the same with pull requests. Words are almost always essential, but demonstrating bugs/changes/features directly through accompanying visuals is hard to beat.
First, they didn't play in all browsers at the company I worked at. That meant I had to either download it, or use a different browser for that.
But even then, it was a game "guess what the CSR thought was wrong" in the video. Usually after watching a rather long intro sequence before getting to the actual bug.
If the company is trying to replace written bug reports with videos for speed or convenience, it's a nightmare for the devs.
If it's just an add-on to show the specifics, then it might actually be good. I rarely got those.
Also, more subjectively, the snippets don't really match the aesthetics of the rest of the site. The pseudo-macOS rendering inside the black borders is strange, as is the choice to use different monospace fonts for filenames and code snippets.
But yet they hijack the standard Cmd-Z “insert link” shortcut for search, so you have to use their non-standard alternative. Not good.
Pretty sure just about every other option is pretty likeable compared to Teams!
1. Teams automatically creates a chat group for every Teams calendar event. This can include external attendees.
2. Teams is useful for chat & meetings, but Teams spaces are hugely helpful as document repositories, too, and it's additionally easy to add things like Gantt charts and other enriched content types through add-ins.
And a bonus one:
3. The ability to seamlessly transfer a Teams meeting connection between arbitrary devices (laptop -> desktop, phone -> laptop, etc).
Great, so each conversation is spread out and siloed. Thankfully Teams has good search and you can find stuff, right? Right?
> Teams is useful for chat & meetings, but Teams spaces are hugely helpful as document repositories, too, and it's additionally easy to add things like Gantt charts and other enriched content types through add-ins
Slack Canvas kind of does this. I'm not convinced having all your documentation in your chat/meeting app makes sense, but it could be useful.
> The ability to seamlessly transfer a Teams meeting connection between arbitrary devices (laptop -> desktop, phone -> laptop, etc).
Zoom does this too, and has for years. I think I've seen Slack huddles offer the same option too.
This happens in Zoom as well, without the extra Teams downside of external attendees being 4th class citizens.
> 2. Teams is useful for chat & meetings, but Teams spaces are hugely helpful as document repositories, too, and it's additionally easy to add things like Gantt charts and other enriched content types through add-ins.
This is really simple in demos, but tends towards sharing documents via email again (for external attendees) or growing the channel size massively (for internals who need the documents but aren't obviously needed in the team).
The old ways - curating channels - are the best ways.
Why are these even isolated? That's what parameters are for!
Great to see Slack using a similar combo!
We didn’t have a dedicated accessibility team though, so I paired it with a shit list which the team worked through in less than a year.
It's not much but it feels like when I'm on YouTube with a device that doesn't have adblock and a short ad plays before the video.
It's not related to accessibility, but it's still UX.
I'll keep it in mind, thanks.
Discord does the same bullshit and this works there too.
(This assumes you’re not logging out when closing the slack/discord tab. Sometimes it just doesn’t work with Slack and you have to do a full login.)
Should be "complement".
Some of their recent releases have left a lot to be desired.
Probably most IRC clients are more accessible.
As soon as you start thinking about the side features. they are not comparable.
* A support for sharing images and files
* Rich text formatting
* Can easily share code blocks
* Rich and granular permission system, suitable for a large organisation
* Webhook-based integrations
* A rich ecosystem of existing corporate integrations (like calendar integrations)
* Accessible web application, that provides access to all of those features
* Mobile app (for both android and ios) that provides access to all of those features
* Built-in OAuth/OIDC integration, that makes it easy to put it behind a company proxy.
* User statuses, avatars, metadata (like real name or team name), timezone-awareness
* Adding guests to channels, or bridging channels between servers
* Voice calls
* Search (!) with history, accessible for any device
* Actually, you can write to someone who is not online right now, something IRC doesn't support without a bouncer.
* Project management features (lists etc)
* Well documented and rich API
* Enterprise support
And this is just out of the top of my head.
Also we're not comparing IRC and slack, but slack used from an IRC client and slack used from an electron client.
Perhaps you didn't completely understand what I was saying?
> Mobile app (for both android and ios) that provides access to all of those features
Nothing stops you from using all the clients you want? Again, I suspect you don't fully understand the thing you're hating on so hard.
> Accessible web application, that provides access to all of those features
Slow, and I'd like a disabled user to comment on that. Also not all features work on firefox.
> Voice calls
Doesn't work, but are you really claiming voice calls are more accessible than text? Have you asked a deaf person how they feel about voice calls?
> Actually, you can write to someone who is not online right now, something IRC doesn't support without a bouncer.
Works fine. Ok I realise you didn't read my comment and are just raging for no reason because you read "IRC" and got mad.
> A support for sharing images and files
Worksk fine with localslackirc. You can directly pipe the output of commands into channels
> Rich and granular permission system, suitable for a large organisation > Webhook-based integrations > A rich ecosystem of existing corporate integrations (like calendar integrations) > Adding guests to channels, or bridging channels between servers > Well documented and rich API > Enterprise support
??? This has absolutely nothing to do with the client??
> Rich text formatting
Not supported
> Can easily share code blocks
Works fine, they're saved into text files
> Built-in OAuth/OIDC integration, that makes it easy to put it behind a company proxy.
Works fine with any authentication
> User statuses, avatars, metadata (like real name or team name), timezone-awareness
Avatar not supported, metadata is supported
> Search (!) with history, accessible for any device
Doesn't work, but it's of course accessible with other clients
> Project management features (lists etc)
If you do your project managing on slack, I'm glad I don't work with you :D
I'm also glad I don't work with someone who just reads 1 word and gets triggered into an OT rant, to be honest.