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Default screen reader mode shortcut clashes with ChromeVox toggle #10060
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A colleague asked whether it was intentional that the shortcut for screen reader mode is the same as the shortcut to turn on ChromeVox. I mentioned this in chat to @maribethb but raising as an issue here so it doesn't get lost.
I don't have a Chomebook to hand, but it seems likely this will go wrong for screen reader users.
The implementation calls preventDefault, so maybe they lose the shortcut? Or it'll turn on screen reader mode but also turn their screen reader off (assuming the common case where it was already on at this point).
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maribethb commentedon Jun 25, 2026
All of these seem terrible for one reason or another.
Option/Alt+Shift+A could work, but it won't work if the user is focused on a text input (on mac it would type Å instead) but that is probably fine, as none of the other blockly shortcuts work if you're focused on a text input anyway. It is also apparently the default shortcut to activate the browser extension "Dark Reader" which is one of the more popular dark mode extensions (the extension would eat the keypresses and not pass them to blockly), but a) system controls for that are more prevalent and less likely to be needed these days b) can students on school hardware even install extensions? and c) do people who turn on screenreader mode likely to be using a dark mode extension?
Another possibly good idea, in addition to the shortcut, is for applications to have a "Skip to main content and enable screenreader mode" option (instead of or in addition to the regular version of that)
microbit-matt-hillsdon commentedon Jun 29, 2026
Shortcuts are hard!
The worst not-quite-conflict for Alt+Shift+A appears to be Windows input language switching for multi-ligual users which happens on Alt+Shift alone (but not if you press the A too, confirmed on Windows 11, even without an event handler).
There's also a clash with accesskey in Firefox on Windows. MakeCode doesn't use this, it's pretty ancient and use is discouraged and you'd have to have an accesskey for A in the DOM.
But this isn't bad considering there's so much to conflict with out there.
It's hard to have two of these and there are two audiences here, not sure I'd tab past the first in the hope of a second. FWIW it is on MakeCode's settings menu.