User story: Why accessibility-minded Kazuhito Kidachi chooses Vivaldi
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With a deep knowledge of browser specifications and accessibility, Kazuhito Kidachi shares his experience using Vivaldi and what stands out for him.
Click here to see the full blog post
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While I don't have any disability - apart from the common bad eyesight of a middle-aged geek who's been sitting way too much in front of a monitor - I am concerned with accessibility. Specifically keyboard accessibility, as I have suffered from painful Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from mouse use earlier, and I try to use the keyboard as much as possible.
Vivaldi is the only browser where the user can do nearly all browser tasks using only the keyboard, without the use of an extension, with custom hotkeys and spatial navigation for webpages. If Vivaldi also could add Vimium/Vimperator-style link hints, it would be a match made in heaven
Keep up the great work Vivaldi, and don't let new features be implemented without proper keyboard accessibility (there's been a slight trend towards that lately...)
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Nice article.
But… 😱 As a disabled person i have to complain: "The Spatial Navigation is getting worse or fails completely."
Broken keyboard navigation is not really nice. And i reported bugs over the years.
And i know there are many unfixed spatial navigation bugs.As a longtime Vivaldi user
i feel sad 
as keyboard navigation with more than a few websites fail. -
I still wonder how I can use multi touch gestures on my trackpad in Vivaldi. I know that my trackpad has support fot multi touch gestures because Original Microsoft software makes use of them, but not Vivaldi, e.g.: 2 or 3 finger swipe gestures do not work. It would be a great accessibility feature and make my life a lot easier ...
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A nice story with some recognizable points.
But I have to agree with DoctorG: whereas Vivaldi sometimes seems to be the only one that even tries to do an extra step in terms of accessibility, some of it is also proof-of-concept that isn't as polished as it should be.
Having had some carpal tunnel problems many years ago, in the Opera days I started doing a lot keyboard-only, mainly using spatial navigation. In Vivaldi I tried to copy that usage pattern but the feeling was just a bit off. Muscle memory is very important in that sort of things.Some glaring unusabilities in spatnav persisted throughout the years (just to mention: the spatnav outline and selection not playing well when intermittently scrolling, inability to background-open pages, general flaws in the selection algorithm). I'm glad I don't have carpal tunnel problems anymore and I've reverted to a mostly mouse-centered usage again.
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@kazuhito
Interesting article.
Thank you.
