alexwallis

Hi Maurice, thanks for your reply, Maurice I am completely blind, this means I can't see anything on my screen at all, so it is completely pointless for you to talk about blue menu bars or positioning of icons I can't see any of that, I rely on use of my screen reader completely to use a computer, meaning that text is read out with artificial speech, and its why I am complaining about the performance of this new release of malwarebytes so much it is far from suitable for my needs and needs a lot more work and testing doing on it. In its current state I wouldn't recommend any blind users buy this program under any circumstances, I would advise them to check out the competition. As stated in this thread I am really happy to work with malwarebytes on sorting this situation out, and I look forward to hearing from the quality assurance team when there is a new build I can test. In the mean time I am going to go back to 1.75 myself, so I will run the cleanup tool twice and then install the copy of 1.75 I still have. Its strange because in 2.0.3.1 I have entered all the license information correctly and it says premium in the title bar but there is all this stuff about buying a license as well, but even if we got that resolved the fact is there are just two many problems with using this application with a screen reader that just make it unusable especially in the case if the program found a threat, so for simple ease of use and accessibility I am going back to 1.75. I really hope I hear from the quality assurance team before the next version is released as I am happy to help and I will be quite angry if my offer of help isn't taken up because at the moment I can't use the latest version of a product which I paid for, and I am sure the issues can be resolved. Has malwarebytes considered approaching blindness organisations in the country you are based in, they could probably advise on accessibility or put you in touch with specialists, organisations like the national federation of the blind in the US for example.

Hi, I have tried to attach the log file you asked for, but unfortunately this forum isn't that screen reader friendly either, most of it I can get around with difficulty, but the choose files button didn't respond to my keyboard for me to upload the file. Is there somewhere I should email it? Regarding my registration it says premium but there is still this fix button on the main screen and its got stuff on it about buying a license. As for navigating the program, if I am typing in text such as my license ID or registration key I should be able to arrow through those edit fields with my left and right arrow keys so that the information there is read character by character, but this didn't work, and it should do. About using the mouse pointer this isn't possible because the special cursor mode my screen reader has for doing this doesn't work with malwarebytes and is one issue that needs fixing.it isn't able to read any information on the screen. When you refer to a menu at the top, do you mean the options you can tab across like view license info or the dashboard button? or buy menu on the top, should there be a menu bar accessed with the alt key, the sort of menu you might get file, edit etc in. I find that when I press the alt key in malwarebytes I just get a menu with close, minimise maximise.

Oh and I can't access a menu bar, is there a menu bar since 2.0? I can't find a settings button. I also noticed that my screen reader doesn't read me any messages saying either that the database was successfully updated or that it is up to date, in fact the only reason I know the database was updated at all was because I happened to see the download in progress and then read the database number, before in malwarebytes 1x messages were displayed saying the database has been updated from whatever version to the new version, or if it was up to date it would say this. I am not sure were those messages balloons?

Hi, OK I followed the above instructions and have reinstalled malwarebytes, the database now updates without causing my screen readers to crash. Though I noticed another problem when entering my license information again, I couldn't use the left and right arrow keys to review the license key and ID fields buy character, and pressing up and down arrows didn't read the lines either, again these are standard screen reader features which should be available. Also, as soon as I entered my license information the fix button has come back on my screen suggesting there is some sort of issue with my license, but the title bar says malwarebytes premium. of course I have no idea what the problem is not being able to access the rest of the screen lol. I can confirm though that the other previous issues remain after a clean install suggesting there is a long way to go in screen reader accessibility.

Hi Maurice, thanks for your message, to answer your question I believe I have 2.0.3.1 I downloaded it on the day they announced "screen reader compatibility." I just installed it over the top of my last 1x version, regarding the database version number I assume the database is corrupt or something because the version number shown is 0.0.0. also the system tray icon doesn't show the program version number, and it says premium in the system tray icon.

Hi Samuel, So do you need my email address then? I found out today that malwarebytes really doesn't play nicely with screen readers if I needed more evidence that is, today I found out my database was out of date because I decided to scan the malwarebytes main screen with my phone to read text from it, which I shouldn't have to do if I had jaws cursor access I wouldn't have had to. Anyway when I tried to update the database, it caused my jaws screen reader to totally crash, when I got it restarted I found malwarebytes had also completely crashed and I had to turn my computer off with a forced shut down and restart. I then tried doing the same thing with NVDA and this time malwarebytes again crashed but NVDA stayed running luckily even so I still had to force shut down my system. Also there doesn't seem to be an options button on the main screen, I seriously preferred the 1x interface. also, other information I found out from scanning the malwarebytes screen with my phone is that I am being prompted to buy a license which I had no idea about, because malwarebytes still says premium on the title so I had no idea there are any issues with my license, you really need testers involved urgently to sort these issues out. I have another friend who is also blind and he said his system locked up completely at the end of a scan. I think he would be interested in assisting with testing as well.

Hi Samuel, thanks for your reply, is there any chance I can become involved in product testing? with all due respect I don't think there is any way you will be able to make malwarebytes accessible without input from at least one preferably a lot more blind users using a range of screen readers. To be quite frank malwarebytes can't be considered accessible at all at the moment just giving access to the tab order isn't enough not nearly, I can't give you any more accessibility issues because literally all I can do is access the tab order which makes the program useless for me if I can't read what its doing, I need to be able to access all information on the screen not just a few controls on the main window, I believe that at the moment it isn't possible for someone who is blind to use 2.0.3 with a screen reader independently at all. Yes we might be able to start scans but that's no good if we can't read important information that isn't a program control about what the scan is doing, if threats are found and then of course we have to be able to deal with them. Your first priority should be to make the program to be able to work with the jaws cursor and other virtual cursors offered buy other screen readers such as NVDA. Beyond that I can't give more information because of the lack of accessibility at the moment. Do you have anyone dedicated to accessibility? its all very well me coming on hear and making a fuss but really you need a dedicated person for accessibility who can be contacted with issues etc. I would prefer not to go through regular technical support as often these channels simply don't know how to handle accessibility problems or don't understand.

Hi all I am writing following installing malwarebytes 2.0.3 the other day. I am completely blind, so I was quite excited when I saw that 2.0.3 claimed screen reader compatibility, as before this I couldn't use version 2.0 at all and so I was stuck on the last version before 2.0. However, after installing it and spending only 5 minutes with the update I believe I can confidently say the claims of screen reader compatibility are a joke, there is some improvements but not much. In this new update I can read the tab order of the screen, this means I can tab around the opening screen and read items on it. However this is literally all I can do, one big issue which hasn't been improved at all is that I can't use a special type of cursor in my screen reader called the jaws cursor this navigates the mouse pointer with the keyboard and allows me to read dialogues and other information that wouldn't normally be accessible through the tab order. I can give you a typical example of where I already need jaws cursor access in malwarebytes, on my opening screen there is a button called fix, now obviously this wants to fix something, but the question is what, I need the jaws cursor to be able to find this information out, I am not going to just press fix and see what happens. I also use the jaws cursor to read information about the progress of scans. However the jaws cursor is unable to navigate at all inside malwarebytes. The next issue I found is that there is the dashboard button on t he main window, but jaws keeps saying this is checked whenever I press it and apart from that I can't see any changes on the screen, also this is a button not a checkbox so it shouldn't even be saying checked in the first place. Its quite obvious to me that they have done no testing with jaws what so ever, as jaws cursor access is a basic need in accessibility, they clearly haven't consulted blind users at all on making this app accessible, and think that simply giving access to the tab order is enough, well it isn't this application can't be called remotely accessible yet, and I plan to downgrade again to pre 2.0, I am very happy to help with testing new updates etc, but following my other post on this topic in August I heard nothing from malwarebytes, there claims of compatibility are a joke, they shouldn't just assume they know how to make things accessible without allowing blind users to test and comment on betas of the product. Jaws is one of the most popular screen readers out there, probably followed buy NVDA however if jaws can't access malwarebytes properly its highly likely that NVDA is going to suffer from similar issues, and in some ways jaws is better than NVDA, and NVDA certainly had issues with 2.0 before. I would very much like to see a response from an official representative of malwarebytes on this issue.

Hi, thanks for the reply, with respect I have to disagree that 1.75 doesn't leave us exposed to significant threats and security issues potentially, it is stated above that 1.75 doesn't have built in self protection or rootkit scanning, and that it doesn't have native 64bit support. To my mind those are extremely serious issues. I fully accept that programming takes time, but 9 months? I suspect the actual issue is the developers don't consider this a top priority issue, the thinking probably goes along the lines of well they can use 1.75 so we don't need to rush to address this issue urgently. Anyway I don't mean to have a go I know your a volunteer who is trying to help and I really do appreciate that. So, question is, where can I download 1.75 from a reputable source? I tried googling for it, I found a site that offered a 1.75 version, and what do you know as soon as I began the download my antivirus picked up a threat trying to infect my system, any help to locate the last 1.75 version would be appreciated. I suspect the gui in the v2 release has probably been programmed with something that doesn't use standard controls that screen readers can access, normally an application shouldn't need really special programming to be screen reader accessible screen readers are pretty flexible and versatile these days you would have to try pretty hard to create something totally inaccessible or use something like qt. It is fairly rare these days to find completely utterly unusable applications, sure they do exist but you would usually expect them to be packed with fancy graphics.

Hi, thanks for the great replies to this topic, it sounds like running 1.75 is a far from ideal solution, and the fact this issue has existed now for nearly 9 months with no solution from the developers speaks volumes for how much they care about there customers. Basically they have now crippled this product for screen reader users, and you would think maybe they could consider pushing some kind of emergency update out to fix the issue, I mean why should we be forced to run out of date technology with quite big security holes simply because the developers don't consider screen reader users important enough to push an update for? basically we are being asked to choose between accessibility or leaving our systems exposed to attack and threats. How can this be considered remotely satisfactory. I do appreciate all the help from the volunteers though, but it also says a lot that no developer has jumped on this topic either.

Hi, I am writing to this forum in hopes that I can contact one of the malwarebytes developers. The reason I am writing is because I am blind and having a problem using malwarebytes which I don't think the usual technical support will have the knowledge to deal with, its also possible they might simply ignore any message I wrote to them on this topic but a public forum post is harder to ignore, I think this needs the attention of one of the malwarebytes developers. So in order to explain the problem I need to say how I use a computer. The answer is that I have a program on it called a screen reader this is able to read any text on the screen with artificial speech and allows me to use a wide variety of programs for pretty much anything a sighted user uses the computer for. So now that I have explained this I can explain the problem I am experiencing, its very simple, since malwarebytes was updated from v 1x to v 2x it has become completely impossible to navigate the program with any screen reader. I am unable to access the menu bar or any element of the gui, I would be very happy to help beta test new versions to help get this issue resolved, as having my computer protected is just as important for me as it is for anyone else on this forum, with the added complication that at the moment I can't read any messages malwarebytes gives me, I can't get it to scan my computer or remove infections the program is essentially useless to me as I presume its protecting me but I can't do anything with it. I have payed for the premium version of malwarebytes ages ago before it became inaccessible to screen readers, so I would really appreciate it if this issue can be looked at urgently. I am happy to offer any assistance or information to the developers I can that might help them fix this.