Multi-line comments accessibility for screen reader users

[Menelion]

I brought it zillion times on various Microsoft accessibility channels, adding it here and hoping for good.

I use GitHub every day with a screen reader (my preferred setup is Windows + Chrome + JAWS for Windows, but I tested with different combinations). When reviewing a pull request, if you use the mouse, you can select several consecutive lines and add a comment or suggestion for all of them at once. Screen reader users and, in fact, all keyboard users (I assume) have no such possibility.

The solution I proposed is quite simple: There are line numbers. Make them interactable via keyboard (I'd say something like toggle buttons with some ARIA on them), so a press would either select or unselect a line. then, if a user clicks that plus button (which is correctly labeled as Add Line Comment, which was done upon my request back then), a comment will be spread to all the selected lines. If a non-contiguous line is selected, the selection would then be expanded so all the lines until that one would be selected. So, if I click number 5 and then number 10, all lines from 5 to 10 inclusive would be selected.

Thanks in advance.

[davorpa]

Great improve!!!

It also happens with touchable devices 😉

[CyrilleB79]

Yes, it would be really useful, especially for projects such as NVDA, developed for and partly by blind people people using keyboard only.

[Menelion]

@benjiallen This is the discussion I created about the multi-line comments accessibility. Would be nice to have this feature screen-reader accessible. Thanks!

[benjiallen]

Thanks for the feedback @Menelion I'll work with the PRs team to bring this to their attention and keep you in the loop when this lands on a roadmap.

CC: @willsmythe

[Menelion]

First, as this is still not implemented, @benjiallen is there any update on this? And second, could you probably move it to Accessibility category? If I can do it on my own, please guide me how to do it. Thanks!

[akash07k]

Yes, it would be quite useful if gets implemented/fixed

[SpecOps12]

@benjiallen What is the state of this topic? Any news?

[benjiallen]

@SpecOps12 not much to share. The accessibility of commenting is a high priority for the team but there are a few things ahead of it right now. I'll post here once we get started as we'd love to get some user feedback on ideas we have.

[Menelion]

More than a year ago did I bring this issue for the first time. Actually close to one and a half years. It's bitter and sad to admit that such a simple accessibility improvement cannot make it to Github in such a huge amount of time.

[benjiallen]

@Menelion thanks for the feedback. We continue to work on it. Once we have ideas and solutions ready for more comment, we'll share.

[ShaneDittmar]

@benjiallen Has there been any update on making the multi-line comments feature accessible?

[Menelion]

And another half a year passed, even more. any updates on that?
P.S. The whole Accessibility category needs to be cleaned up, it's a nightmare actually. Lots of scam, off topic discussions and simply meaningless garbage.

[burmancomp]

There has been suggestion for one and half a year how this could be solved, and that suggestion has been voted up. However, nobody has had time to consider implementation for this in team.

I am waiting for constructive answer from the team when this is fixed. One and a half year is long time especially taking into account that solution has been suggested and voted up.

[XLTechie]

Any solution to this problem would be welcome!
As a blind developer, this has been a point of pain in the use of GitHub pull requests for years.
I am disappointed to find now that GitHub has been aware of it since at least 2021, but has not prioritized a solution.

Being unable to comment more than one line at a time in PR diffs, is both frustrating to me, and no doubt annoying to my sighted colleagues who must compensate for "my" deficiencies in only providing one-line suggestions that really need to be five or six line suggestions.

[cehfisher]

Hello @Menelion - thank you for taking the time to provide this feedback! Our Accessibility team is actively working on this issue. We will follow-up here with any additional questions or updates. Thanks again! (cc @queenofcorgis)