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I need a way to un-break Firefox's accessibility "features" in the newest release.

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  • Last reply by Mkll

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I work as the Sr. SysAdmin for a nonprofit that works exclusively with clients who are blind or visually impaired. Ever since Firefox got it's new look and feel, it is not usable--at all--to any of our clients who make use of screen reading software.

First turning on the computer, it seems to run fine. However, the browser quickly begins to hang, become unresponsive, and basic key commands to instruct the screen reader what to do are not executing in Firefox for a delay that seems to increase the longer you attempt to use it. Closing the assistive software instantly returns Firefox to a normal, smoothly-running application. Turning back on the assistive software turns firefox into an unresponsive, unusable program.

This is across Windows 7 and Windows 10 with all of the latest patches and updates. Assistive software we have tried includes JAWS and NVDA. Every combination of software and OS has yielded this same issue. This was not present until the newer look and feel of firefox was introduced.

Any assistance on how to resolve this issue--which miraculously passed QA unnoticed--would be fantastic, and much appreciated.

I work as the Sr. SysAdmin for a nonprofit that works exclusively with clients who are blind or visually impaired. Ever since Firefox got it's new look and feel, it is not usable--at all--to any of our clients who make use of screen reading software. First turning on the computer, it seems to run fine. However, the browser quickly begins to hang, become unresponsive, and basic key commands to instruct the screen reader what to do are not executing in Firefox for a delay that seems to increase the longer you attempt to use it. Closing the assistive software instantly returns Firefox to a normal, smoothly-running application. Turning back on the assistive software turns firefox into an unresponsive, unusable program. This is across Windows 7 and Windows 10 with all of the latest patches and updates. Assistive software we have tried includes JAWS and NVDA. Every combination of software and OS has yielded this same issue. This was not present until the newer look and feel of firefox was introduced. Any assistance on how to resolve this issue--which miraculously passed QA unnoticed--would be fantastic, and much appreciated.

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Screen-readers currently have issues in Firefox 57 and above. For more information see this page: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/can-i-use-my-screen-reader-new-firefox

As a work-around you can use 52 ESR which will get security updates until August 2018, and will support your accessibility programs. Get it here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/

It will be upgraded to 60 ESR in August 2018, which screen reader issues should be sorted by then.

If this helped solve your problem, or answer your question - please mark as solution. Thanks for using Firefox!