Steps to reproduce:

1. Open DevTools and go to the Accessibility tab.
2. If accessibility features are enabled, click the "Turn Off Accessibility Features" button.
3. Click the "Pick accessible object from the page" button, and try to inspect an element.

Expected result:

• At the end of step 2, when accessibility features are off, the "Pick an element" button should revert to the default Inspector button.
• As a result, step 3 should not be possible.

Actual result:

• In step 2, the "Pick accessible object from the page" button is always visible.
• In step 3, the "Pick accessible object from the page" button is visible but clicking it does nothing.

The main UX issue IMO is that we're showing a button that doesn't work.

We should either:

1. Make sure we only show the "Pick accessible object…" button when the Accessibility tab is focused and accessibility features are enabled.
2. Or show the "Pick accessible object…" button when the Accessibility tab is focused, and auto-enable accessibility features if users click this button.

I'm going to mark this as a P3. But double checking with Yura.

Hi Florens,
I think there are 2 issues here:

• From the screen shot it seems like there is a bug where when the panel is disabled, the accessibility picker button is still enabled. Expected behaviour is that the button is also disabled.
• You are suggesting changing the behaviour to switching the button from accessibility picker to inspector picker if accessibility panel is disabled?

I think the latter will probably be not relevant, as we are going to run an experiment that will enable the panel automatically whenever the Accessibility tab is open. In that case the UI related to disabling/enabling the panel is going away.

Yura, on FF83 I can't see the "Turn Off Accessibility Features" button. My assumption is that if you switch out of this tab you turn them off automatically (?). I can't find any bug on this though. Is there something you need to do to make this appear?

If not, then is this issue still relevant?

Yeah this UI is no longer available. And I think the bug can be closed.

Thanks Yuri. Does this mean that my assumption is correct - " if you switch out of Accessibility tab you turn them off the features automatically"? Or is it that they remain on and we just removed the option to turn them off. Or something else?

The reason I ask is that the docs say that they are turned off by default because they slow down the browser. I need to clarify if this is no longer true or if there are other ways to turn the features off, or if it happens automatically (as assumed in line above).

(In reply to Hamish Willee from comment #5)

Thanks Yuri. Does this mean that my assumption is correct - " if you switch out of Accessibility tab you turn them off the features automatically"? Or is it that they remain on and we just removed the option to turn them off. Or something else?

The reason I ask is that the docs say that they are turned off by default because they slow down the browser. I need to clarify if this is no longer true or if there are other ways to turn the features off, or if it happens automatically (as assumed in line above).

Yeah I think the wording around "slowing" the browser down is somewhat outdated. There's definitely memory and performance footprint, but it does not deteriorate the overall performance really.
Accessibility engine in Firefox will not start unless users use the panel at least once. It will also not shut down if the panel was opened in one of the tabs until the devtools toolbox (devtools themselves) gets closed. And that will happen during garbage collection cycle.
Hope this helps.

Yura, absolutely it helps. You're a star. Thanks.