I'm using the web client on a Mac. I've tested this with Safari, Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome and all three have the same issue. When using the web client to play games like Duck Racing, the text appears on screen too fast and thus whenever new text comes in, it interrupts what Voiceover is already reading. I can't access general settings to try and fix this myself because on all three browsers it says something like this setting isn't available on your browser.

Hello,
the correct place is not general settings, but channels and views.
Here, in particular, try adjusting the channel game messages and its speech priority.
That being said, Safari on the Mac has always interrupted every game message and I was never able to fix this. It might even be VoiceOver on the Mac just being buggy, because the exact same setting works perfectly fine on iOS and VoiceOver doesn't interrupt anything when it's not supposed to.

Hello,

I have made a change. Can you tell me if it's better now ?

I have changed message deletion timeout from 400 to 1500ms for Safari. I hope it solves the problem for mac. For iOS, it doesn't change anything as nothing is interrupted.
If you can, it would be interesting to test in other browsers than Safari. I don't know if Chrome and/or Firefox are accessible on mac ?

Hello,
unfortunately, for me, this changed nothing.

Just to be clear on where the issue is, it doesn't matter if it is a game or not. Even if you write a longer chat message, and while it's being read another one arrives, the second one will always interrupt the first one. Of course, it depends on how fast your screen reader is and how much will be read in a given game.

One workaround I have noticed is that if you use page up and down to review the history, while a message is being read that way, incoming new messages don't interrupt it. Changing game messages to high or critical doesn't solve anything though, because now again everything interrupts each other as before, with an additional sound playing (VoiceOver on the Mac plays a sound for aria-live=assertive messages).

For your other question, yes, Chrome and Firefox both work with VoiceOver, with various advantages and disadvantages, and the same is true for the Playroom web client. I could go into detail regarding these, but for this particular issue, everything is the same across Firefox and Safari, Chrome is honestly the worst here, but I doubt that's a problem on your side. In Chrome, if, for example, 3 messages arrive quickly in a game, the reading order is totally inconsistent with no way to explain that easily. Sometimes maybe they will be read in the format 2, 1, 3, the other times they will be read normally, another time in the format 1, 3, 2, and so on. These numbers represent the number of the message arriving, e.g. first message is 1, second message is 2 and third message is 3.
Chrome doesn't seem to interrupt messages but it's quite pointless when they are being read in this inconsistent way and it's very difficult to follow what is going on, especially since there are more often much more than 3 messages arriving, for example if in a Duck racing game I skip 2 turns and the bot is playing, the order of what VoiceOver is reading completely makes no sense.

Well, to finish up this long post, I can test any other change made, or answer any additional questions you may have.

PS: I noticed you enabled musical / counting duels on the web client as well. Was that intentional? Counting duels seem to work fine, but musical duels seem completely broken. No notes play, whether if I press the numbers or if they are supposed to play in a sequence.

Yes it's intentional for new duck racing challenges. I'll look at what the problem could be.

Why are you setting mode to aria-live=assertive ? polite mode should be sufficient. At least it works very well with VoiceOver iOS.
In assertive mode, it's perfectly normal that a new message interrupts everything. This is precisely its purpose.

I have also made a change for Chrome windows, which uselessly repeat several times the same message. Can you tell me if it changed something for android, and if yes, if it's better or worse now. Thank you.

Hello,
sorry if this was unclear, I'm not setting the mode to assertive. Setting it like this was only a test to see if it changes anything.
Assuming I got it right, normal / low priority should be polite, and high / critical should be assertive.
Indeed, if I use iOS, this all works perfectly. Setting game messages to critical causes everything to interrupt, as expected, but keeping it at normal works without interrupting anything.
Well, on the Mac, this isn't so. Even if my game messages channel is set to normal, messages still continue interrupting each other.
I'm not sure what causes this difference.

Hello,

Well, I think I won't be able to do better. It looks like VO on Safari Mac takes everything as assertive, sadly.

What you explain for Chrome on mac about inconsistent message order is recent since yesterday, or it has always been so ? In doubt you may test again. I can restore the previous behavior if it was better.

I can also try to activate the new behavior for Safari Mac, too. I didn't do it yet because I thought it was just about deleting older messages too early, but it seems that it's more complicated than that.

Do you notice recent changes with chrome on android ?

Thank you for your tests.

What you explain for Chrome on mac about inconsistent message order is recent since yesterday, or it has always been so ?

Sorry, I'm not sure. Honestly I rarely use Chrome on the Mac, usually Safari or Firefox do a much better job. I've tried it on the Playroom just today to see if it makes any difference and noticed this weird reading order. For example, when I start a game of Duck racing, VoiceOver reads the following, in exactly this order:
It's your turn.
The game is starting.
Everyone receives 3 cards

Of course, the correct order is instead:
The game is starting.
Everyone receives 3 cards
It's your turn.
Obviously, in the history they appear in the correct order, only automatic reading is broken like this.

I can also try to activate the new behavior for Safari Mac, too. I didn't do it yet because I thought it was just about deleting older messages too early, but it seems that it's more complicated than that.

I'm not sure what this new behaviour is about, could it fix messages interrupting in Safari? If so it could be worth testing and seeing what happens. I suppose also that if I test and find that it now makes reading order inconsistent in Safari too, we'll know it's probably not good for the Mac.

Do you notice recent changes with chrome on android ?

I tried a test on Android as well, there everything works correctly. The reading order is normal and there is no interruption as expected.

I use Android as a secondary device, but now I'm slightly jealous of Android users. I've discovered that on Android it's entirely possible to leave the web client in the background and go to your home screen, and it still normally plays all the sounds and you can hear what is going on. On iOS as soon as you leave the web client all sound playback stops, which is just unfortunate, but I assume a limitation you can do nothing about.

In any case, thanks for your responses and attempts to fix this. It's really unfortunate that not only are there so many browsers, systems and screen readers, they also don't behave consistently.

Hello,

I have activated the new behavior on safari mac. Is it better now or there is no change ?

I have slightly changed the algorithm on chrome mac, does it make a difference between now and yesterday ?

Thank you for your tests.

Hello,

ok it's definitely this new behavior then.
Now with Safari, the reading order is inconsistent too, just like what I described yesterday with Chrome. It appears to be completely random in regards to the order in which messages are being read. It's really a shame, because indeed with this new behaviour, messages no longer interrupt one another, but the problem is that it is really difficult to follow anything that way. I could give an audio demo in case it would be more helpful to understand what happens...

With Chrome on the Mac I don't notice any change compared to yesterday. It's still inconsistent like before.

OK. Let's try something else completely different.

This time, it no longer works with Chrome on Windows. It works just as before on Firefox Windows and Safari iOS.
How it goes for Mac and Android ? You can try again all browsers.

If it's better now, then I'll try to fix Chrome on Windows later.

Thank you.

Well now the results are quite weird and hard to describe as well.

Safari Mac

I'm not sure if you remember, but before the 2018 web client update, VoiceOver on the Mac would randomly skip some messages and completely refuse to read them. Well this is basically what happens now. For example, I am playing a game of Monopoly. My opponent rolls the dice and buys a property. VoiceOver says:
Opponent buys Pennsylvania railroad (station) for 200 $
However, the "it's your turn." message is never spoken and completely skipped.

The reading order is sometimes completely fine, and sometimes wrong. Same game, same browser, even same table. For example, a few turns after this, VoiceOver read the following:
"You advance by 7 squares.
Short line railroad
You roll the dice: 6 1.
Short line railroad (station) is sold for 200 $. Do you wish to buy it ?"
That's why I said hard to describe, because basically I now randomly experience all issues above in a mix. Sometimes everything reads just fine, the next time the order might be wrong, and another time it might interrupt or skip a message.
Even without any game, the same inconsistencies happen even when just chatting. If somebody writes a very long message, VoiceOver starts reading. While it's still reading, another message arrives, now anything can happen. It may not interrupt reading the first one, it may interrupt, or it may completely skip reading this second one when the first one is done.

Firefox Mac

This is a little more positive, or at least less random. Here it behaves just like Safari before these new changes, that is, messages always interrupt each other and behave as if everything is assertive. In my opinion, if you can't fix this, you should restore this behavior of Safari too. At least it's consistent and less confusing...

Chrome on Mac

This is basically the same as Safari described above. In other words, completely random between sometimes wrong order, other times interrupted messages, and sometimes skipped messages.

Chrome on Android

Probably the best result, this remains fine. Messages don't randomly interrupt and everything is spoken correctly.

Hello,

Well, I'm run out of ideas for the moment. I'll restore the old behavior while trying to find something that works, it seems less problematic even if it isn't ideal.
Safari on Mac definitely looks like the worst case.

Would you be ready to do more tests with me ? We'll continue privately, so to stop filling this discussion while our tests are in progress.

I would like to create minimal pages reproducing the different issues we found so far, and then post them on Stackoverflow, with the hope to finally get a working solution.
I would also add english helpers in that private discussion, because they can certainly help us with further tests. If you think about other people who may help, tell me also about them.

Thank you.

Hello,
yes, you can of course contact me for any further testing.

I was also thinking you should create some sample pages, but a small note when doing so. As I have said above, with the old behavior, VoiceOver always interrupts speaking, even in polite mode. However, VoiceOver will interrupt speech only if a message from a previous live region is being spoken.
For example, on the Playroom concretely, if I am navigating my list of friends, VoiceOver will not interrupt speaking the currently focused item to speak a new message in the game history. It interrupts speech only if it is speaking a history message at that very moment, and a new one comes in.

Thus, when creating example pages, you need to make something that updates a live region quickly with new text, just like the Playroom does when you are playing a game.

Hello,

Just to let you know, the new challenges should now completely work on the web client. I forgot to convert the new sounds into MP3 and M4A, and this is needed because several browsers don't support OGG.

valentine-fall can help you

@Aminiel it seems that on the Windows client, sometimes, in a counting duel, the Duck plays slow, at a low pitch, probably intentional. However, I just confirmed a suspicion with a friend, we had a counting duel, and while I had the lower pitched slow sound on the Windows client, he, on the web client, had a perfectly normal Duck sound, thus he was always going to finish the duel faster. Is it possible to sinchronize this so that 2 people who are in a duel always get the same sound with the same pitch / speed?

Thanks.

Hello,

I have released a new feature that could help those who are playing on the web client with a mac.

If you go under options>audio, you will find a new option called speech mode with two possibilities: screen reader or speech synthesis.
If you activate the second one, messages will be read by another speech synthesizer independent from VoiceOver.
When the option is activated, you can choose the voice and change rate, pitch and volume of that other synthesizer (options appear just below).
You can shut up the second synthesizer by pressing Ctrl.

The advantage of that feature is that you can be sure to not miss any message, there is no more unwanted interruptions.
The main drawback is that you can have both VoiceOver and that other speech synthesizer speaking at the same time (and it can happen rather often).

Test this new feature and tell what do you think about it. Does it help, or not at all ?

Small note: according to the tests we already made, it looks like that it doesn't work with MacOS 12.4. Make sure to upgrade to the latest MacOS 12.5 to be able to use that new feature.