I submitted this to google, please also send what issues you experience on Google Docs/suite; I have to use this shitty product at my school as nobody else use pages and voiceover just can't handle it. thank you.
I’m completely blind and use VoiceOver. I use Google Docs in both Chrome and Safari on my Mac. Each browser handles Google products differently and has its own set of issues. However, I’ll focus on Chrome here, since it’s Google’s own browser.
When I open a menu from the menu bar using Control+Option+F to access File, for example, and navigate through the menu items using the up and down arrow keys, VoiceOver works correctly if I wait for it to finish announcing each menu item and its keyboard shortcut. However, when I navigate quickly to find a specific menu item, VoiceOver stops speaking entirely and no longer announces which item I’m focused on, even though the keyboard focus continues to move. This doesn’t happen in Safari, but Safari has significantly more accessibility issues with Google Workspace than Chrome, so switching browsers isn’t a viable solution. You might suggest using the menu search function, which I already use, but this issue still needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
When braille display support is disabled, Google Docs sometimes handles text review correctly, but most of the time, it doesn’t. Occasionally, VoiceOver reads the text as I navigate with the arrow keys as it should. However, when navigating by character, VoiceOver announces “zero width space” for every single character I move through. This makes writing and reviewing text in Google Docs incredibly frustrating. As a result, I often have to paste text into documents instead of typing directly, which can make it seem as though I’m cheating on an assignment when I’m not, or simply makes the process impractical.
The “Verbalize selection format” menu item in the Accessibility menu doesn’t work. Its keyboard shortcut, Control+Command+F, also conflicts with the Mac’s shortcut for entering full-screen mode, making it unusable for its intended purpose.
When I indent a list item using the Tab key, Google Docs doesn’t announce the indentation level when I review the text. This makes it difficult to navigate and work with nested lists.
I’ve been using a Mac for two years now, and Google Docs has never been easy to use with VoiceOver. Please address these accessibility issues. There are many other minor problems, but I can’t begin reporting them all before these more fundamental issues are fixed.
I’m hopeful that these issues will be taken seriously and resolved. Thank you!