Windows Live Hotmail (a.k.a Hotmail 2.0) has been released. I took it for a test drive with Window-Eyes this morning, which resulted in the following email to our Microsoft accessibility contacts:

Greetings,

Does anyone know if developers on the Windows Live Mail project tried any screen reader during the development process? Accessibility in Windows Live Mail is greatly lacking in the "improved" layout: controls are not labeled, graphics are not labeled, many links (while focusable) are not activated by the keyboard. If Microsoft has a company wide commitment to accessibility, no one told the Windows Live Mail development team.

If Window-Eyes users want to continue using Windows Live Mail successfully, they will need to revert back to the classic view. Rumor is, the classic view will eventually be removed. I hope that's not true.

Any suggestions or comments?

Neither Yahoo! Mail nor Gmail are any better. Fortunately, for now, they also include "classic" views that provide the old school method of putting everything in clickable links -- what a concept!

So are these new layouts and views really that bad when it comes to Window-Eyes? Well, yes and no. Technically, although it takes a bit more effort and understanding, you can still navigate and successfully use the enhanced interfaces of these email services (I'll talk more about that in a bit). They prove, however, that the hard fought battle of impressing the importance of accessibility to developers during the initial design phase of web based applications didn't pan out like everyone thought it did (not that it's over, mind you).

Disregarding accessibility in this day and age shows a fundamental misunderstanding of your target market, portrays your business as ignorant about disability issues, and gives you an overall impression of being behind the times, and out of touch with current technology trends. Pioneering new ideas and techniques is all the rage with Web 2.0 applications among the Internet's biggest players. But when it comes to accessibility, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google all seem to be content to let someone else take the lead. Remember that when you're buying stock options.

With that rant out of the way, let me give you a few pointers if you want to use the new interfaces of these email services, rather than being forced to use their antiquated versions:

1. The interfaces are dynamic. That means, for the majority of navigation purposes, you'll want to have browse mode turned off.
2. The mouse is your friend. Once browse mode is off, you're at the mercy of the browser when tabbing around. So become familiar with the numpad mouse navigation keys for maneuvering through folders and message lists.
3. The find command is your second best friend. Almost all email services use common names for folders (i.e. Inbox, Drafts, Outbox, Sent, Deleted, Trash, etc.). Use the find command to navigate to these folders quickly, and then click on them with the mouse to load their messages.
4. It seems the point of these new interfaces is to make web based email applications look more like stand alone email applications (i.e. Outlook Express). If you know how stand alone email applications are generally laid out on the screen (folders on the left, messages on the right), you can usually figure out where things are, again by using the mouse hot keys.
5. Once you have an email message open, turn browse mode back on to read it. A quick way to jump to the meat of a message is to search for the word from, and then a colon (i.e. from:). That should take you right to the from line, with the rest of the headers, and message, right nearby.
6. Make use of any available keyboard shortcuts. Gmail is best at providing keyboard methods to get the job done. For example, in Gmail, you can press C just about anywhere to immediately compose a new email. Search through your mail app's documentation for available keys.
7. Most message folders highlight the selected message with a fake lightbar. You can get the color of this lightbar by placing the WE cursor on the text of a message that's selected (don't use the mouse pointer, because it could affect the color of the lightbar), and then listing the ANSI attributes (using CTRL-INS-DELETE). Once you have the foreground and background colors of a selected message, go into the properties of the active user window (INS-F7), enter the foreground and background colors in the Enter Highlight Attributes dialog, uncheck the Auto Determine Highlight Color check box, then select OK. Then, in the cursoring keys dialog, change up arrow and down arrow from their default setting of line to highlight. So what did all that do? We told Window-Eyes not to guess the color of the lightbar itself, but rather to use the colors that we specified. Then we told Window-Eyes to read those colors rather than the current line when using the up and down arrow keys. Now, when you arrow up and down with browse mode off, you'll hear the selected message just like in a stand alone client. When using Yahoo!, pressing enter on the selected message causes the message text to open up in a new page where you can use browse mode to read. Windows Live Mail, however, does nothing when you press enter. So you'd probably want to take advantage of the reading pane, which automatically displays the selected message (Yahoo! also has this feature). This method will work with any web page that uses a lightbar in conjunction with the arrow keys. Gmail doesn't, so it won't work there.

While it's frustrating to have to hack around a web application interface created by a company who claims dedication to accessibility, it's a welcome relief to have the power of Window-Eyes to get the job done. That's not a shameful plug; it's the truth.

Update: Jeff Bishop told me that MS has had enough complaints about the inaccessibility of the new interface that they've agreed to maintain the classic view. I don't call that a solution; they need to implement the basics of web design in their new interface. Non labeled graphics? Come on. That's unbelievable! We're talking HTML 101. At least users won't be left in the dark, so to speak.