Accessibility bug: Mentoring discussion rich text editor unusable with screen readers

Exercism Bugs & Feature Requests
1

Reporting an accessibility bug affecting screen reader users in the mentoring discussion interface.

Summary

The rich text editor used for mentoring discussion comments is inaccessible with screen readers, making it very difficult or impossible for blind users to participate in mentoring conversations independently.

Affected area

Mentoring discussion comment editor (posting replies after submitting an iteration).

Environment

  • OS: Windows
  • Browser: Microsoft Edge Beta 145.0.3800.36 (64-bit)
  • Screen reader: NVDA alpha-54475,7a210002 (2026.2.0.54475)

Steps to reproduce

  1. Navigate to a mentoring discussion for an exercise.
  2. Move focus to the comment editor.
  3. Attempt to type a response and submit it using only the keyboard and a screen reader.

Observed behavior

  • The editor does not announce itself clearly as an editable text field.
  • Pressing Tab inserts a literal tab character instead of moving focus out of the editor.
  • The “Send” / submit button is not reachable or identifiable via normal keyboard navigation or screen reader navigation.
  • The submit button can only be found using OCR.
  • As a workaround, responses must be written in an external editor, pasted in, and the submit button hunted for manually.
  • The issue occurs when using keyboard-only navigation (no mouse).

Expected behavior

  • The editor should be exposed as a standard accessible text input or properly labeled contenteditable region.
  • Keyboard users should be able to tab out of the editor normally.
  • The submit button should be reachable and announced via keyboard and screen reader navigation.
  • No OCR or mouse interaction should be required to post a comment.

Impact

This significantly hinders participation in mentoring, which is a core feature of Exercism. Blind users cannot reliably engage in mentor conversations without workarounds.

Additional notes

Happy to help test fixes or provide more details if needed.

3 Likes
2

Hi there! That’s of course not great. We strive to fix all accessibility issues where possible. Unfortunately the lead developer is finishing a new piece of Exercism this month, so I do not thing we can have a quick turnaround (all of us are only volunteers).

A workaround is as follows:

  1. Find the button with accessible name Settings in the header (unfortunately no labelled region). It should be before the button with the accessible name Open more options. It is marked as not expanded and as having a popup.
  2. Upon activating it, sometimes (not consistently) the focus should move to a role="dialog" labelled with: A series of radio buttons to configure the Exercism's code editor. If this does not happen, Arrow down or Tab (or your way of moving one tab stop) once.
  3. This should land you on the first menu item (1 of 2).
  4. Move to the second menu item (2 of 2). This menu item should have two form inputs, with two labels. You want to activate the one with the label Accessibility (value = default).
  5. Escape or Tab to close the dialog and unexpand the button.
  6. Tab once to get to the Open more options button
  7. Tab once more to get to the role="tab" with missing role="tablist" . Find the file you want to edit
  8. A final Tab should now enter the editor. This is a contenteditable="true" region.
  9. To leave, Tab or <Shift + Tab as usual.

Let us know if these steps are confusing or do not work for you.

1 Like
3

Hi. I wasn’t trying to edit a file, just to write a comment in a mentoring discussion. I don’t remember seeing a settings button there. Thanks, and I hope this helps clarify things.

1 Like
4

Right. Sorry yes.

This same pattern should be applied there too, but I see now that it’s not. Unfortunately no work around for that. I’ll flag it up the pole!

1 Like