Cumulus Support

Asked on behalf of Michael Lawler who is blind and finds the forum difficult to use with screen reading software.

Following issues noted with build 3122:

1. The sub categories of settings are not tabbable and are not accessible. Could they be changed to buttons?
2. Can the tables under settings internet settings be modified like the table in settings extra web files so that the edit boxes are accessible?
3. I get #39 in my title bar instead of the ' character. Can this be translated back to '? I don't know if it shows visually, but my screen reader reads it this way http://lawlers.us/weather
4. Choose today at my site and there are no values for days since last dry day or days since it last rained.
5. If I leave station model blank it messes up the display on the main page of my site. I thought this field was optional.

1. The sub categories of settings are not tabbable and are not accessible. Could they be changed to buttons?
2. Can the tables under settings internet settings be modified like the table in settings extra web files so that the edit boxes are accessible?

1 & 2 - I have no control over these, they are rendered by the Alpaca package. In order to change them I would have to migrate the setup pages to another package, this would be a big task given the number and complexity of the setup pages

I could look at more modern forms implementation, something like JSON Forms, but I do not know how reader friendly that is either.

3. I get #39 in my title bar instead of the ' character. Can this be translated back to '? I don't know if it shows visually, but my screen reader reads it this way http://lawlers.us/weather

3. Two things here.
a. The apostrophe in the text in the tab title appears as ' to me in Edge. That is what the Windows Narrator reads.
b. The station name on the index page renders correctly as an apostrophe. But there appears to be a browser bug in what text it sends to screen reader. Narrator reads it as "#39" The browser is sending escaped HTML for characters that should be sent as text.
(It looks like Firefox fixed this bug 5 years ago! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1279842)

Because some characters like <, >, & always have to be encoded, Cumulus encodes the station name string as it could contain reserved characters. That converts the apostrophe to the code "&#39;".
We had someone who used one of the restricted characters in their station name and that corrupts the whole page.

What I could try is using a different encoding mechanism that converts far fewer characters to HTML entities. I'll have to test it though...

Choose today at my site and there are no values for days since last dry day or days since it last rained.

4. Your Today page has values for those two fields when I look at it.

5. If I leave station model blank it messes up the display on the main page of my site. I thought this field was optional.

It is user configurable, though I hadn't expected people to leave it blank.
The only place it is used is one the Now page in the sentence "The weather station in use is the <station name>, and these pages are updated every 1 minutes."
So that sentence does not make sense if you insert a blank.

One solution for now for issue 3. is to change websitedataT.json from...
to This should be OK, for that location name because it does not include any reserved characters.

Thanks for the responses, Mark. I've passed it all on.

Further response from Michael:

For item 2 could you do the same thing that you did in build 3100
• Fix: Improved accessibility of the "Extra web files" page
Actually this still has issues that I forgot. If the edit boxes are empty then there is no way that I can find from the keyboard to get to them, but if they have data then they work now.
For item 1 and perhaps 2 if you create something in jsonforms I'd be happy to test it. If you do just create something that is as simple and quick to create as possible. It doesn't need to be real data or anything just ui.
I agree with item 4. I just had to use a different command to get the data so that was my mistake.
So will you account for the empty case for item 5?
I had two more questions. On my site I don't understand how the records button works. Also when I choose the reports link it gives an error and then when I try to choose the month nothing seems to happen.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 04 May 2021 2:23 pm Further response from Michael:

For item 2 could you do the same thing that you did in build 3100
• Fix: Improved accessibility of the "Extra web files" page

No sorry. The extra web files settings page does not use Alpaca forms, so I have (slightly) more control over it.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 04 May 2021 2:23 pm Actually this still has issues that I forgot. If the edit boxes are empty then there is no way that I can find from the keyboard to get to them, but if they have data then they work now.

Not sure what the issue is here? I can tab to empty fields on new rows?
What I cannot do is tab to the check boxes on any row. Are you managing to navigate to these settings?

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 04 May 2021 2:23 pm For item 1 and perhaps 2 if you create something in jsonforms I'd be happy to test it. If you do just create something that is as simple and quick to create as possible. It doesn't need to be real data or anything just ui.

Once I get the next release sorted, I'll take a quick look.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 04 May 2021 2:23 pm So will you account for the empty case for item 5?

I will not do anything for now, but I'll put it on the "to be looked at" list

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 04 May 2021 2:23 pm On my site I don't understand how the records button works.

I assume the buttons on the Monthly Records page.
They switch the page contents to show the all time records for that month of the year.

freddie wrote: ↑Tue 04 May 2021 2:23 pm Also when I choose the reports link it gives an error and then when I try to choose the month nothing seems to happen.

It is not finding your reports files on the web server.
By default they are uploaded to the root folder of your web server.
You have to enable the FTP transfer of the reports using Settings > NOAA Settings > FTP Options. Then tick "Auto FTP NOAA report files".
If you want the reports to upload to a subfolder of your main web folder, then specify the folder name in the "FTP directory" field.
Note 1: Cumulus will transfer the current year and month reports at the next day rollover. If you have reports from previous months or years you will have perform a one-time manual FTP of those files to your web server.
Note 2: If you use a subfolder, then you will have to manually create that folder on your web server.
Note 3: If you use a sub folder, then you will have the edit the /js/noaarpts.js script on your web server and change line 9 from:
let rptPath = '';
to
let rptPath = 'folder-name';

Some further points from Michael regarding NOAA reports:

On the noaa reports I copied the month and year files from cumulusmx\reports to my local web site to test them and I have a few issues.

1. When I press the month button nothing appears to happen. I don't know how to get to the monthly verses annual summary.
2. The units should be in the units I'm using for temp, rainfall, etc. I see on the settings noaa pages that they are not and they are also not in the reports.
3. The reports need some table or grid markup to make them screen reader accessible.

1. I have already noted that the NOAA reports page on the default web site is not accessible and I am working on it - there is a thread with @beteljuice somewhere!

2. They should, I can't really understand how they would use a different units, they use your program wide defined default units?
The NOAA settings page does not define the units - you just enter values which you have to make appropriate to your default units.
There may be an issue with them being saved as the Celsius defaults for new installs - this is a part of a more general issue in that values cannot be "undefined" and need special values allocating to represent that state - most of them haven't, so MX saves the default values.
Sounds like he may have to change all his to the Fahrenheit defaults.
Another one for the ToDo list

3. The NOAA reports are plain text files with a predefined layout. This was retained over the years because utilities used to read them in code - whether this is still true I have no idea, but they remain a legacy anachronism.

Okay fair enough. I spotted that thread you speak about in 1 just this morning. And 3 - I thought that was the case so will pass it on.

1. When I press the month button nothing appears to happen .....

Actually you can select May !

I think there are a couple of things going on ..

OK - the reports are being put in the weather/ directory. however NOAAMO0421.txt is MIA (and disabled in dropdown)
Records began April this year so nothing for Jan, Feb, Mar - but these show in the dropdown !
I believe this is because in the distro js although the year option of 2021 is created it is not 'selected' or val 'set', so when a later 'val' check is done things don't get processed as expected.

beteljuice wrote: ↑Fri 07 May 2021 12:10 pm

1. When I press the month button nothing appears to happen .....

Actually you can select May !

You can.

beteljuice wrote: ↑Fri 07 May 2021 12:10 pm Records began April this year so nothing for Jan, Feb, Mar - but these show in the dropdown !

The current script does not allow for the start year and month being in the current year. I have fixed that, but I'm still working on the issue of not being able to reselect the current year report - dropdowns don't allow that.

... but I'm still working on the issue of not being able to reselect the current year report - dropdowns don't allow that.

I am totally unfamiliar with the effects of non-mouse navigation, but ...

Instead of my onmouseenter on the year container, how about onfocus ?

Yes, that would work. Still need to rework the month selector though - that is nearly there.

mcrossley wrote: ↑Fri 07 May 2021 1:05 pm I'm still working on the issue of not being able to reselect the current year report - dropdowns don't allow that

I don't use any of the new default web site files....so maybe I don't understand what you mean. This answer is purely based on my HTML knowledge.

I presume what you mean by dropdown is that your JavaScript is creating a HTML option list selector, if so, your script can write in "selected" attribute to make any option in that list the default for next selection?

If after selecting a month you want to display the year again it's is already selected. So you have to select another year, then the one you want again. Messy, and you can't do that if only one year is available. The onfocus and mouseover events are a way around that, so is adding a dummy option with the same value that you make the selected option onchange

That is sorted, it is the W3 month selector that is more challenging when I last looked at this.