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Re: JAWS 10 and Hidden Text

for

From: Terrill Thompson
Date: Mar 23, 2009 4:20PM


Hi Al,

The ARIA on my example page was not intended to be a recommendation for how
to hide text. It's just a test to see whether the "aria-labeledby" attribute
overrides all methods of hiding content using CSS. This would be a handy
method on a page with dynamic content, where you didn't want anyone,
including screen readers, to see the content initially, but you wanted that
content to be rendered to everyone later, triggered by certain events.

It actually does work in browsers that support ARIA. I tested it in Firefox
3, and JAWS 10 read expanded labels for all three buttons, and these
expanded labels had been hidden using visibility:hidden, display:none, and
off-screen positioning, respectively. It doesn't work in IE7, but I suspect
it works in IE8 - I haven't tested that.

Terry

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Al Sparber [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 2:12 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED> ; WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] JAWS 10 and Hidden Text
>
> From: "Terrill Thompson" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>
> > It just came to my attention that JAWS 10.0.1139 has the following
> > Internet
> > Explorer enhancement:
> > "JAWS no longer announces input fields that are hidden from view by a
> > cascading style sheet."
> >
> > That's listed here:
> > http://www.freedomscientific.com/downloads/jaws/JAWS-whats-
> new.asp#Enhanceme
> > nts
> >
> > Anyone know what this means? I just tested an input field (and
> paragraph,
> > for comparison) hidden using various techniques, and I'm not
> observing any
> > changes in JAWS behavior. JAWS does not read content hidden using
> > visibility:hidden or display:none, and it does read content
> positioned off
> > screen. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something critical.
> >
> > Here's my test page:
> > http://terrillthompson.com/tests/hiddencontent.html
>
> In JAWS 10, only the off-screen content is accessible. Nothing else,
> including your ARIA labels, is accessible.
>
> Why would you feel you need to use ARIA? It would seem that if it
> should be
> used at all it's primary value would be for added content, not existing
> content that is hidden. There are too many more practical ways to make
> hidden content accessible.
>
> --
> Al Sparber - PVII
> http://www.projectseven.com
>
>
>