[Trainer-talk] Malwarebytes/Triumphs and Struggles

[David Goldfield]

First, I'd like to report that I had a major aha moment regarding the 
user interface of Malwarebytes Anti-malware, which caused me to see that 
the UI is, in fact, nearly 100% accessible.  Here is what I've discovered.
Once I open the program, I find that it may be necessary to press the 
tab key one time to move to the beginning of the items contained within 
the program.  The first thing you will likely hear is something like 
"dashboard button checked, overview of application status."  From what I 
can tell, this is not so much a button as it is a tab control, similar 
to what you encounter in most multi-page dialog boxes, such as the 
options dialog within My Computer or in Internet Explorer.  At this 
point, if you press the tab key, you will find options which pertain to 
the program's dashboard. However, from the dashboard tab press the right 
arrow and you will hear something like "scan button checked, scans your 
computer for threats enter."  At this point, pressing the tab key will 
take you to various options relevant to scanning your computer.  This is 
similar to the items in Microsoft Security Essentials which are spoken 
by screen readers as buttons but which are really the equivalent of 
tabs.  If I am correct about this, then the Malwarebytes developers 
could make the program's UI a bit more obvious for screen reader users 
by replacing the word "button" with the word "tab", such as "dashboard 
tab, scan tab, settings tab, etc.  I may not have time to contact them 
today but I will make a point of doing so sometime in the next few weeks 
or so.
Here is where I ran into problems.  I should say, at this point, that 
what I'm about to report has nothing to do with accessibility but more 
with overall reliability.  Yesterday, while running MB from my slightly 
restricted owner account, the program crashed right after performing its 
scan, telling me that the program has stopped working.  I logged off and 
logged on to my administrator account, ran the program and encountered 
the same issue.  In fact, it even crashed right after choosing the 
option to perform an update of the malware definitions.  I was able to 
locate a Malwarebytes removal tool which I ran.  It removed the program 
quickly and asked me if I wanted to restart.  I said yes, logged back 
onto my admin account and reinstalled the program.
Once I did this, I had ever so slightly better but still problematic 
results.  After performing a scan, the program did not crash and allowed 
me to view log results.  I chose this option, copied the log onto my 
clipboard, viewed the results in Jarte, closed Jarte and then 
encountered the same "Malwarebytes has stopped working" message.  I 
closed MB, restarted it still as an administrator, this time going into 
settings and enabling rootkit scanning.  The scan completed, I opened 
the log viewing options, copied the log to my clipboard but this time 
did not go into Jarte right away but instead just exited the log viewer 
and was able to close the program properly with no crashes.  I don't 
think the fact that I didn't open Jarte while MB was still running is a 
factor in whether it will crash and, btw, the scan log showed that my 
system is totally clean.
I'm going to take a Malwarebytes break for the time being and do a few 
other more important and fun things, such as eating some leftover pizza 
for breakfast and getting caught up on laundry. However, I wanted to 
compose this report to keep all of you apprised on what I've discovered 
about the UI of this program.  If any of you have had similar or 
different experiences using Malwarebytes anti-malware, I'd love to hear 
your reports in the comments section.


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      David Goldfield,
Assistive Technology specialist
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