Accessibility: Screen reader accessibility issues for search results (and other views)

[robertbalte]

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Plan

Premium

Country

Sweden

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 11

My Question or Issue

In the latest update (1.2.86) or maybe a bit earlier, the search results view (and other views as well, the episode list for podcasts is the one I recall now) have changed. Before in the search results screen, each area, like "tracks" or "artists" had their own heading, which was marked as such in HTML (same for podcast episodes in the episodes list). This made it very easy to navigate using a screen reader like NVDA or JAWS. Now, there are no good way to navigate the search results. For a short while, each part of the search results were their own ARIA region, but that also disappeared. Also, the search result links, at least for the top result, does not have an understandable name when viewed by a screen reader, it shows what I presume is the ID for e.g. the playlist.

This issue is present using both NVDA and JAWS, and on different devices. Restarting the app (multiple times) does nothing to solve the issue.

I would suggest to either return to the appearance of these views to how they were before 1.2.86 or to incorporate headings, landmarks and other necessary accessibility attributes for the new screens to solve this issue.

[Paula_Vi]

Hi there, @robertbalte 

Thanks for coming to the Spotify Community and sharing this experience. 

Spotify is committed to making the app accessible for everyone so any feedback you can provide is very helpful. We've passed all this info internally to be reviewed. Thank you for your comments.

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