This is a temporary solution but for now, since Aira is free for job tasks,
could this be an option until this stuff gets fixed?
From: blind-philly-comp-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-philly-comp-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of David Goldfield
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 9:57 AM
To: Philadelphia Computer Users Group for the Blind and Visually Impaired
<blind-philly-comp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-philly-comp] From My Blog: No Headings On Web Sites Containing
Job Listings? A Problem, Indeed
Introduction and Explanation
I am noticing what may be a new and problematic trend in the way that Web sites
which offer career listings are displaying their search results, which can have
a negative impact on users of screen readers.
In order to provide a familiar comparison most of us have likely navigated
search engines with a screen reader. As an example, when you perform a search
on Google you probably know that you are able to navigate the results page by
moving from one heading to the next, which is accomplished by pressing the
letter H when using the majority of screen readers. As each search result
contains a heading tag you can simply press the letter H to move from one
search result to the next. Pressing shift+h allows you to navigate in reverse.
This is not the only way to navigate a page containing search results but it is
probably one of the most efficient methods which can be used.
For years, the majority of Web sites which specialize in job listings used the
same markup on their results page. I have used these sites for over a decade
and many of them allowed heading navigation to be used. This was, as you can
imagine, extremely convenient as you could easily and quickly move from one
search result to the next.
Indeed.com
Indeed
<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.indeed.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C63f63480520443a3cdd408d7b3b8927e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637175477617192932&sdata=ChBKHcgMj1INUqgnlGxx5IfhN5FG%2B02cYppDCeHc2dA%3D&reserved=0>
is a well-known site which allows you to search for, browse and apply for
open positions. It had always used headings to separate one job listing from
another, allowing a screen reader user to quickly navigate from one job listing
to the next.
A few weeks ago I noticed that heading navigation was no longer an option when
navigating the search results on this Web site. The links themselves were
accessible and my screen reader could speak them with no difficulty but
headings had disappeared in the search results. This is problematic for several
reasons.
First, they do allow filtering options to be navigated by heading. Therefore,
pressing H to move forward through headings will take you to options such as
salary estimate, job type, location, company, etc. At the time of this writing
the last heading on an Indeed.com search results page is Experience Level. If
you press H again you will either be told that no more headings exist or, if
you’re using JAWS with its default settings enabled, you will be wrapped back
to the top and your focus will be placed at the first heading on the page,
which will be a level 1 heading containing the beginning of the main content.
Users who are not expecting this behavior will find this a bit surprising and
somewhat disconcerting.
Here is how you have to locate the first search result on the page with its
current implementation. First, you have to navigate to the last heading on the
page, which is Experience Level. The quickest way to do this is to press
ctrl+end to move your virtual cursor to the bottom of the page and then press
shift+H, which moves your cursor to the last heading on the page. Next, move
down by several links and you will eventually find the link containing the
first job listing, above the words “page 1 of xxx jobs” where xxx contains the
amount of total pages containing your results. You could also move to the top
of the page and search for the word “page” which would likely take you to the
“page x of xxx jobs” text. The point I’m trying to make is that neither of
these options are obvious, intuitive or efficient and screen reader users
should not have to do this in order to efficiently navigate a page containing
search results.
At the risk of belaboring this point even further navigation is also not
efficient because, since I can no longer navigate by headings to jump from one
result to the next, I am now forced to navigate from one link to the next and
each job listing is comprised of four links, such as the job title, the name of
the company, the page containing reviews of that company and a link for saving
the job. The link containing reviews is also poorly labeled, with a title like
“3.6”, which I assume is the average of the amount of ratings the company
received. It goes without saying that I should not have to navigate four links
to move from one search result to the next and I felt that contacting Indeed
Support was in order.
Contacting Indeed Support
I sent Indeed a tweet and asked them to reinstate heading navigation.
“
<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.easychirp.com%2Fuser%2FIndeed&data=02%7C01%7C%7C63f63480520443a3cdd408d7b3b8927e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637175477617202928&sdata=lY5KwgPb1pZYDGJuRj2HW%2BkHLSDtKtsze8uWTd0%2BKrc%3D&reserved=0>
@Indeed You recently removed headings which were located at the beginning of
each job listing in the search results. This change makes navigation with a
screen reader a bit more inefficient. Would you please reinstate headings to
allow for heading navigation?”
Here is the response I received from @indeedsupport.
“
<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.easychirp.com%2Fuser%2FDavidGoldfield&data=02%7C01%7C%7C63f63480520443a3cdd408d7b3b8927e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637175477617212926&sdata=cf9icsE%2FX8hLFwKNUa0MOxVx7fVuo40CotuplX9MEpM%3D&reserved=0>
@DavidGoldfield Hi David, you could visit our website through an
incognito/private window and it will bring up the previous layout. ^DR”
This response is, in my opinion, almost laughable and is hardly what I would
call a reasonable solution. I wrote back with the following response,
comprising two separate tweets.
“@IndeedSupport 1/That's good to know but most users aren't going to think of
launching your site in incognito mode just to have an interface that uses
heading navigation. Can't you offer this as an option? It makes it easier to
navigate from one search result to the next.”
“@IndeedSupport 2/Most Web sites displaying search results group each result by
heading. I'm sorry but it just isn't reasonable to tell a screen reader user
that they must launch a site using incognito mode in order to have this
capability.”
Here is their response.
“@DavidGoldfield We appreciate you sharing this feedback with us, David. While
our team does not have a way to change the layout we can assure you we will
pass this feedback over to our team internally. ^TC”
I think that what they were trying to convey was that the support team was
unable to change the layout of the site but that they would send my feedback to
the appropriate team that could make the necessary change.
Careerbuilder Is Even Worse
I decided to visit other sites containing job listings just to prove that
similar Web sites list their search results by headings. I was in for a bit of
a surprise.
Not only did the search results for Careerbuilder
<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.careerbuilder.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C63f63480520443a3cdd408d7b3b8927e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637175477617222933&sdata=ffw14BFsoxYFjXW8PZg49YVK8DQ2dHhpg%2FvsI4n65b8%3D&reserved=0>
not contain headings to separate one listing from the next but the actual
links for the job listings were not consistently being identified as links when
using JAWS. When I move link by link using JAWS 2020 with the “any link” hotkey
(undefined by default) I was unable to locate the links containing a label with
the job listing. If I moved line by line the links were identified when I moved
to them with up arrow but navigating with down arrow just read the link as
nonactionable plain text. The “any link” hotkey did locate links to the job
listing page but those links were not properly labeled. No headings existed to
separate one search result from the next.
Monster: An Example of A Results Page Done Correctly
Thankfully, Monster’s
<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.monster.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C63f63480520443a3cdd408d7b3b8927e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637175477617232928&sdata=u4JGjocJMOrs2XnakTIcVn3Tq2ckxLrNucJbjBuGrQU%3D&reserved=0>
search result page is nicely laid out, allowing me to move from one search
result to the next with heading navigation. JAWS detected a read-only field for
entering a job title on the main page prior to the actual edit box for entering
this information which did confuse me but, overall, the site is navigable.
What Can We Do?
If you feel that these issues are important I am asking that you contact Indeed
and Careerbuilder to alert them of these problems and to let them know that
heading navigation needs to be reinstated on search result pages to ensure
quick and efficient navigation for users of screen readers. While we need to
keep these messages polite and respectful we also need to remember that these
are not feature requests and our messaging should indicate the necessity of
heading navigation. Accessibility is a necessity and not a feature or an
option. Here is some contact information for these sites.
Indeed
Twitter: @indeedsupport
Contact Form (which also contains no level 1 heading to quickly move to the
main content)
https://www.indeed.com/support/contact?hl=en ;
<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indeed.com%2Fsupport%2Fcontact%3Fhl%3Den&data=02%7C01%7C%7C63f63480520443a3cdd408d7b3b8927e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637175477617242909&sdata=nHs0OE%2BuJBVMWRQkNUMb%2BuJ1nsaelCR2X%2FeNMhEFgl0%3D&reserved=0>
Careerbuilder
Twitter: @CareerBuilder
Contact Form (also containing no headings)
https://www.fuzeqna.com/careerbuilder/consumer/question.asp ;
<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fuzeqna.com%2Fcareerbuilder%2Fconsumer%2Fquestion.asp&data=02%7C01%7C%7C63f63480520443a3cdd408d7b3b8927e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637175477617252907&sdata=JEC5qs9ECpBYhZ8wHGS6TdHlhsC4fTuTfT4KOiU0urg%3D&reserved=0>
Conclusion
I have not visited other career Web sites to see if their results pages are
using headings. It is possible that Indeed and Careerbuilder are in the
minority when it comes to this oversight. However, even if this is true these
two sites are major, well-known players in the job listings space and it is
critical that blind job seekers have proper access to them. I am hoping that if
enough people contact these organizations to respectfully express their
concerns this problem may well be quickly and satisfactorily resolved.
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