4 ms·

> Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in

> Annoyance aside I seriously worry about the accessibility of the windows lock screen. Through a weird display setup I sometimes find myself trying to log in blind and I just can't do it. If you try running a screen reader, such as Narrator (built into Windows; edit: turn it on and off with Ctrl+Win+Enter, even on the logon screen), you should find that even if the focus somehow gets away from the Password field, you can get back there with the help of speech output. Logging in blind doesn't have to mean logging in with no means of orientation. (Disclosure: I'm a developer at Microsoft on the Windows accessibility team, working on Narrator among other things.)

contravariant 6y ago
Fair enough, but on a screen who's sole purpose is to let me type in my password I really shouldn't require a Narrator to find the one and only input field. It's nice that the problem has a solution, but it shouldn't have been a problem to begin with.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  The trouble is that this screen isn't just for entering your password. On my logon screen, I have not only the PIN field (because I enabled the TPM-based Windows Hello feature), but also these other links or buttons: "I forgot my PIN", "Sign-in options", network, Ease of Access, and power. So use of a full GUI framework, that supports accessibility tools such as a screen reader, is justified.
  - 6510 6y ago
    The user doesn't care about any of that. I should be able to wake up the box by typing the pin. The reality is that i have to press the first letter of it then wait then press it again and then I have to wait and see if a dot appears in the field. The reason it works like this is that the user is forced to use the software. It should be the other way around. If people are forced to use something developers should do what they can to not make the experience incredibly annoying. Sure, there can be situations where you need to cut corners but this is the log in screen. After logging in I mistype an application name in the search box and wait for the dialog to pop up that says "Best matches" with an empty list under it. It can't even find "tunderbird" If I type a single letter it shows "search teh web for "a". But it does show Atom! Woah! Technology at work! I get to chose, I can press the down arrow and select "apps" then press enter twice OR I can press the down arrow twice and press enter! Becareful! Dont press the arrow to fast or it jumps back to searching the web for "a". No one put any thought into this process.
    - mwcampbell 6y ago
      > No one put any thought into this process. You're making an uncharitable assumption about real people who work full-time on this stuff. I can assure you that they do put a lot of thought into their work. No, I never worked on the Start menu or search myself, but before we started working from home, I was in the same building with the folks that do.

contravariant 6y ago

Fair enough, but on a screen who's sole purpose is to let me type in my password I really shouldn't require a Narrator to find the one and only input field. It's nice that the problem has a solution, but it shouldn't have been a problem to begin with.

mwcampbell 6y ago
The trouble is that this screen isn't just for entering your password. On my logon screen, I have not only the PIN field (because I enabled the TPM-based Windows Hello feature), but also these other links or buttons: "I forgot my PIN", "Sign-in options", network, Ease of Access, and power. So use of a full GUI framework, that supports accessibility tools such as a screen reader, is justified.
- 6510 6y ago
  The user doesn't care about any of that. I should be able to wake up the box by typing the pin. The reality is that i have to press the first letter of it then wait then press it again and then I have to wait and see if a dot appears in the field. The reason it works like this is that the user is forced to use the software. It should be the other way around. If people are forced to use something developers should do what they can to not make the experience incredibly annoying. Sure, there can be situations where you need to cut corners but this is the log in screen. After logging in I mistype an application name in the search box and wait for the dialog to pop up that says "Best matches" with an empty list under it. It can't even find "tunderbird" If I type a single letter it shows "search teh web for "a". But it does show Atom! Woah! Technology at work! I get to chose, I can press the down arrow and select "apps" then press enter twice OR I can press the down arrow twice and press enter! Becareful! Dont press the arrow to fast or it jumps back to searching the web for "a". No one put any thought into this process.
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    > No one put any thought into this process. You're making an uncharitable assumption about real people who work full-time on this stuff. I can assure you that they do put a lot of thought into their work. No, I never worked on the Start menu or search myself, but before we started working from home, I was in the same building with the folks that do.