When I started leading the drive for accessibility in Visual Studio five years ago, I really didn\u2019t understand the magnitude of what that meant. In all honesty, I hadn\u2019t really thought about accessibility as more than keyboard and screen reader, but we\u2019ve come to learn that it\u2019s a lot more than that. From temporary disabilities, like an injury that will heal to neurodiversity, the idea of inclusive design is a great deal more than I had any idea of.<\/p>\n
The magnitude of the work it would mean for us as well as the impact of what that would mean has really helped many of us realize how important our mission of empowering everybody on the planet really is. I\u2019m very proud of the work we\u2019ve done, but I also know that there\u2019s more we can do. Inclusive design makes Visual Studio an amazing product for all users.<\/p>\n
Today, my day-to-day is less about compliance issues and more about wanting to move beyond \u201cgood enough\u201d. We want to find the features and innovations that help our users do the most amazing things they can. Visual Studio shouldn\u2019t merely \u201cwork\u201d with a screen reader, but it should deliver an experience that feels fluid and natural.<\/p>\n
The only way we\u2019re going to find the next round of features is through engagement with our community. We want to spend more time talking with folks who have disabilities. We\u2019re not prioritizing folks with any particular type of disability, so if you identify as neurodiverse, we\u2019d love to hear from you. If you found something harder while recovering from a broken arm, we\u2019d love to hear from you too. Whatever feedback that folks want to share, we want to know what you think.<\/p>\n
And this is only the start. We want the suggestions and we want the pain points. We want to know the behavior of Visual Studio that really stops you from being as productive as you can be. Whether your feedback falls into the category of \u201cAccessibility\u201d or not, please don\u2019t hesitate to head up to Developer Community.<\/p>\n
For now, though, I\u2019d like to list a few features we\u2019re thinking about. If you have opinions on these, please follow the links and upvote the ones you feel would be helpful. Feel free to jump into the conversations on Developer Community<\/a>. We want to know what our community has to say!<\/p>\n The decision to use spaces or tabs for indentation is a battle that has waged since the typewriter. A year-old thread on reddit<\/a> provides a strong accessibility reason to always use tabs. But what if that wasn\u2019t the case? What if a visually impaired user who uses particularly large fonts wants indenting whitespace to be rendered at the width of a single character? Visual Studio can identify when a series of spaces is being used as whitespace indentation\u2026 who says it needs to be rendered as four (or eight or two) character width?<\/p>\n This feature would allow users to specify the render width of indentation regardless of whether tabs or spaces are used in the file.<\/p>\n https:\/\/developercommunity.visualstudio.com\/t\/Provide-an-option-to-configure-the-rende\/1461161<\/a><\/p>\n Visual Studio has hundreds of options that allow the user to configure and customize the experience to better meet their needs. We recently added a feature to increase the line spacing between lines of code to make the code easier to read. Finding the specific option you want to change is one challenge, but just discovering what can or can\u2019t be changed is a challenge all its own.<\/p>\n This feature would introduce a new feature in the Options dialog that would reduce the displayed options to only the ones that have to do with accessibility. The feature can also be extended to other areas like privacy or security. The feature would make it easier to find groups<\/em> of similar options to help you find and customize your experience.<\/p>\n https:\/\/developercommunity.visualstudio.com\/t\/Create-groups-for-options-to-help-set-an\/1461165<\/a><\/p>\n Windows introduced a feature in Windows 10 called \u201cFocus Assist\u201d. In this mode, the number of notifications is dramatically reduced, but there are still some dials to help the user customize the kinds of things they want to be notified about. Our cell phones have \u201cDo Not Disturb\u201d modes to help us reduce distractions. We believe strongly that developers would want similar control over notifications and distractions in their IDE. But what kinds of things would users want filtered out? Knowing where we can have the most impact would be key for this feature.<\/p>\n This feature would provide an easy way for users to step into and out of a \u201cFocus Mode\u201d. It would also allow control over the notifications they want or don\u2019t want to know about while in this mode.<\/p>\n https:\/\/developercommunity.visualstudio.com\/t\/Focus-Mode-for-Visual-Studio\/1461172<\/a><\/p>\n Recently the Test Explorer had great responses from the community, particularly the visually impaired and blind community that the audio cue feature has been a real delighter. We want to know if this is a feature we should expand on. Visual Studio used to have more support for this, but over the years, usage has waned. However, we\u2019re discovering that there are some workflows that would really benefit from more audio cues.<\/p>\n This feature would provide more hooks and a richer environment for hooking up audio cues to events in Visual Studio.<\/p>\nWhitespace Rendering<\/h2>\n
Option Collecting<\/h2>\n
Focus Mode<\/h2>\n
Audio Cues<\/h2>\n