Map Navigation Tasks for Testing

[shepazu]

See https://maps4html.org/experiments/screenreader/restaurants/

Questions for tester

• How many restaurants are in this area? (8)
• How many of the map feature items are restaurants? (all of them)
• What type of restaurant is Big Daddy's? (seafood)
• How can you navigate to the next available map feature item? How many ways are there to do this?
• How can you navigate to the previous available map feature item?
• How can you navigate to the first and last available map feature item from another feature?
• How do you close the expanded properties information popup?
• Is there a way to hear all restaurants as a single list, without navigation necessary? Is that desirable?
• How can you detect if you've reached the last available map feature item? What happens if you go beyond it? Can you return to it once you've navigated past it?
• What keys do you use to navigate the map? Do they match your expectations?

Issues (MacOS):

• Map seems to reload/reset when hit space key while focused on a feature (Firefox)
• Can't pan map with keyboard controls (e.g. arrow keys?)
• Can't pan map with touchpad scroll
  • zooms instead
  • expectation: 2-finger scroll gesture should pan, pinch should zoom in and out
    • pinch gesture does zoom (good)
• Panning map by grabbing and dragging removes popup (disorienting)
• After opening popup, next tab navigation returns focus to browser UI (Firefox)
• Focus indicator still too indistinct
  • Arrow on "tooltip" too small or not outlined
    • add outline or stronger dropshadow to tooltip (or tooltip arrow)
  • Tooltip is inconsistent which side it appears on, so arrow is not obvious
  • Suggest trying "map pin" (pointy egg) in combination with tooltip
  • Suggest larger focus ring scaled to map
• Native tooltip from SVG <title> element shows at same time as our tooltip (distracting)
  • Suggest using aria-label attribute, not SVG <title> element
• Full popup overflows offscreen
  • Suggest smooth-panning map to show full popup; or…
  • Suggest repositioning popup below northerly features (point up, not down)
  • Suggest making popup height smaller, scrollable area
• Hover is brittle at normal zoom levels, too precise
  • Suggest adding "buffer zone" to catch nearby mouse events
• Empty properties are distracting, may cause confusion
  • Suggest "greying out" and/or reducing size of empty properties
  • Consider hiding empty properties in a <details> element, but changing order of items may be confusing

[shepazu]

Questions for tester

We've constructed a minimal test case map at https://maps4html.org/experiments/screenreader/restaurants/. There are many aspects of an online map that are not present in this example, such as zoom and pan controls, search functionality, and so on. This map focuses only on "map features". A map feature (or "feature" in GIS parlance) represents a real-world location or area, such as an address, business, region, or arbitrary set of coordinates.

The goal of this map is to test the interaction with "map features", from the perspective of a screen reader user, or a sighted keyboard user. We'd want this to be tested without instructions, to see whether an assistive technology user can easily navigate and explore this map. We have a set of 10 questions that should be relatively simple to answer, below. We also welcome any feedback that are also relevant to this type of task. After the initial review, we'd like to have a conversation about any improvements we could make, and possibly to test more advanced or improved examples.

We suggest that the tester not read the whole list of questions first, but instead try to answer each question before moving on to the next.

1. How many restaurants are in this area?
2. How many of the map feature items are restaurants?
3. What type of restaurant is Big Daddy's?
4. How can you navigate to the next available map feature item? How many ways are there to do this?
5. How can you navigate to the previous available map feature item?
6. How can you navigate to the first and last available map feature item from another feature?
7. How do you close the expanded properties information popup?
8. Is there a way to hear all restaurants as a single list, without navigation necessary? Is that desirable?
9. How can you detect if you've reached the last available map feature item? What happens if you go beyond it? Can you return to it once you've navigated past it?
10. What keys do you use to navigate the map? Do they match your expectations?