[Athen] Perusal again

[via athen-list]

Hi,
 
I have used native selection mode for highlighting and annotating/taking
notes with Thorium. It works!
 
I think it will depend how the application is configured to work with
electron. Firefox supported this for a long time, and Chrome and Edge does
now, and Thorium uses electron under the hood.
 
Hope this helps.
 
Best
George
 
 
From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman22.u.washington.edu> On Behalf
Of Deborah Armstrong via athen-list
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2025 10:45 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Athen] Perusal again
 
Last year, I took a course that used Perusal, an online tool which lets
students annotate text. The textbook, or course reader is contained within
the web-based app, and students highlight text and comment on it.
Perusall | Increase Student Engagement with Social Learning
<https://www.perusall.com/> 
It's a very social-media-oriented interface with loads of keyboard
shortcuts. So theoretically, it's supposed to be accessible.
But using it with a screen reader, I found it was very difficult to
highlight text. Though a sighted user could hold the shift and press the
arrow keys to highlight text, just as one would do in a word processor, if
this was done with a screen reader it didn't work. If the screen reader's
virtual cursor or browse mode was on, then highlighting text was taken over
by the screen reader, and the browser and underlying web app was unaware
that text was being highlighted. If the user turned on forms or focus mode,
then they could highlight text, but the screen reader would not give any
feedback, so the user wouldn't know what was being highlighted.
NVDA has a new keystroke, native selection mode, which is toggled with
shift-f10. I haven't tried it because I no longer have access to Perusal.
That might work, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, I have two blind students who are now required to use Perusal in an
online class. 
I'm wondering if anyone else has tried it with a screen reader and has a
solution. Specifically does the NVDA native selection mode work?
Thanks.
--Debee
 
 
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