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Re: WebAIM-Forum Digest, Vol 25, Issue 12

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From: smithj7
Date: Apr 21, 2007 7:10AM

I know that the makers of JAWS, for instance, are constantly updating to
keep up with technology. I heard the new version of JAWS is addressing
issues with DOM.

I see the problem being at least twofold: high cost of speech access
software and lack of specialized update training.

I work for an agency serving the blind. We provide users with an intial
licenses with I think two updates. Most companies are not paying for
updated licenses. Many customers don't realize the need for updated
licenses.

Many companies provide on-going computer training for sighted employees.
Most companies do not provide the on-going training for staff using
speech. They and their employees may not know that this is needed. We
usually get notified when the person is about to or lost their job.

This problem becomes even worst for the people that are using computers
in a home envirnment. People using speech don't just need to keep
computers updated but their speech software update, which is expensive.
Then they need to know how to use it with the new technology.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Joel Hickman
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 5:08 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] WebAIM-Forum Digest, Vol 25, Issue 12


I think that the problem is that most screen readers (that I know of)
rely on technology that is rapidly becoming obsolete. They depend upon
parsing the source of the page (that arrives as the http response from
the server) rather than attempting to dynamically navigate the DOM which
may be modified via DHTML. This means dynamic modifications within a
page performed by the client (browser) are not picked up.

Assuming you can require Javascript (not usually a valid assumption)
then I believe that a dynamic solution that causes a new window to pop
up may be visible to the screen reader. The easiest to use would
probably be the Javascript alert function. Here is an example embedded
in a button:

<button name='alrt' value='Send Alert' style='button'
onclick="alert('This is an error message.')">Send Alert</button>

Now, in a real application, you would probably use some other event such
as onchange rather than onclick, and rather than calling alert directly,
you would call a function that performed error checking and called alert
if an error was found.

A discussion on the accessibility of alert:

http://www.webaim.org/discussion/mail_message.php?id=1072

Joel

-----Original Message-----
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[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of
<EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:00 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: WebAIM-Forum Digest, Vol 25, Issue 12

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