Google’s Basic View Going Away

Many of us who use Google’s webmail will need to roll with some punches come January, 2024. The company is taking away its Basic View option for reading
email, which will inevitably cause us who are blind or visually impaired the need to navigate the Standard View option.
For their part, Google offers a completely optemistic outlook, that people will adapt as they roll out the various features and to learn new features.
Its claim is that removing standard view will make reading email more consistent and more cutting edge.
For many of us who are blind or low-vision, the Basic View as offered a lot of consistency when using JAWS’s quick navigation hot keys. The list of emails
has been easy to read by simply working with heading and table commands Once in an email and replying, the edit field is where we compose our message and
we send it using the easily located “send” button.
With the removal of Basic View, we may need to retrain ourselves to the new Google Chrome screen. Here’s hoping that Freedom Scientific adds this to their
growing list of tutorials. IN the meantime, check out an article discussing this new change
from Today’s Esquire. I have also noted Assistive Tech. teacher, David Goldfield’s remarks from his blog as follows:
“Accessibility issues
The upcoming change “is also a loss for some blind and visually impaired users, as Gmail’s Standard view isn’t fully compatible with third-party screen
readers and other tools,” 
reports
 Andrew Heinzman at How-To Geek.
The Google representative told CNET that the company is committed to giving users leading accessibility options.
“Gmail standard view supports best-in-class accessibility features,” the representative said. “Today, the Standard Gmail view is screen-reader compatible
in all languages supported by Gmail. The basic HTML view is only screen-reader compatible for users who have Gmail set to US-English.”
Pratik Patel,
an executive leadership coach who is blind, said in an email that many blind and visually impaired people found Gmail’s Standard view difficult to use
“due to complex usage patterns, inaccessible design elements, and inefficient navigation.”
“The HTML view has been used by many blind and partially sighted people to accomplish tasks quickly and efficiently,” he said. “People often find it quicker
to accomplish tasks via the HTML interface as opposed to the standard one.”
According to Patel, Google’s Standard view is less usable due to inconsistencies and design decisions that go against established user interaction patterns,
such as issues surrounding message selection.
“These kinds of usability challenges seriously impact how efficiently blind people can manage email with the standard interface, prompting them to turn
to the HTML interface where things are at least consistent,” he said. “I’d like to see Google engage with its users to resolve these issues.””