Guidepup Setup

Setup your environment for screen reader test automation.

Getting Started

Run this command:

npx @guidepup/setup

And get cracking with your screen reader test automation code!

Usage

If you are running this command in CI/CD, it is recommended to add the --ci flag to prevent interactive prompts:

npx @guidepup/setup --ci

If you are using GitHub Actions, check out the dedicated guidepup/setup-action:

- name: Setup Environment
  uses: guidepup/setup-action@0.10.0

If you are encountering errors in CI for MacOS you can pass a --record flag to the command which will output a screen-recording of the setup to a ./recordings/ directory:

npx @guidepup/setup --ci --record

Check out the Documentation Website for more information.

Windows

NVDA Installation

When running on windows a portable NVDA instance compatible with Guidepup will be installed to a temporary directory. The location of this installation directory is stored in the Windows registry under the key HKCU\Software\Guidepup\Nvda.

Foreground Timeout Lock

Modern versions of Windows have a setting which prevents new application instances launching in front of other applications in quick succession, requiring over 3 minutes between activations before it will actually show the window - in the interim it launches the window minimized.

Many test automation frameworks will completely close down a browser after a test has finished and then launch a new instance for the next test - on Windows this suffers from the timeout lock on foreground windows. This impacts on screen reader automation which need the window to activate and focus to be able to drive the screen reader on the application.

To mitigate this the setup script updates two keys in the Windows registry under HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop:

• ForegroundLockTimeout - Specifies the time in milliseconds, following user input, during which the system will not allow applications to force themselves into the foreground. Defaults to 200000.
• ForegroundFlashCount - Determines the number of times the taskbar button will flash to notify the user that a background window has been activated by the system. If the time elapsed since the last user input exceeds the value of ForegroundLockTimeout, the window will automatically be brought to the foreground. Defaults to 3.

Both of these are set to 0 by the setup script.

See Also

Check out some of the other Guidepup modules:

• @guidepup/guidepup
• @guidepup/playwright

Support

• VoiceOver on MacOS
• NVDA on Windows

License

MIT