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Re: Clarification on forms mode of screen readers

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From: Moore,Michael (Accessibility) (HHSC)
Date: Jul 26, 2016 7:50AM


If you are visually impaired and using a screen reader to test whether the form labels are properly associated with the form controls I recommend using NVDA to perform those tests. NVDA does not guess like JAWS does.

Mike Moore
Accessibility Coordinator
Texas Health and Human Services Commission
Civil Rights Office
(512) 438-3431 (Office)

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Vemaarapu Venkatesh
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2016 7:12 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Clarification on forms mode of screen readers

Hello all, Greetings

On the way to understand the interaction modes in JAWS, I got encountered with few more uncertainities

From previous messages I got to know that screen readers will switch the modes automatically and if that is the case no need to switch manually which is happening perfectly.
Now as a screen reader user, when I am testing application using JAWS, it starts guessing the things like the form lables and announce them even though they are not associated. So, how the screen reader user will get to know that the lable is programmatically labelled or not. Yes, if it is labelled the label itself becomes clickable but how a screen reader user will know as he can't click and JAWS even not announcing clickable when focused to label text in virtual mode.

What I understood is if we turn off "virtual pc cursor" manually, JAWS is rendering everything perfectly and I didn't find guessing behaviour in off mode.
The same with "select country of residence" combobox example provided by me in earlier messages.

My question is, whether I have to test all form elements by manually turning off the virtual mode because I can't able to differentiate between programmatically labelled elements and unlabelled elements in virtual mode.

But in NVDA I didn't find any such differences, form elements are similar in both the modes. But I am finding difference in behaviour of JAWS not only in form elements but also in few other contexts when I am manually switching between virtual pc cursor on/ off.
Hope my concern is clear and clarify me about how to proceed my testing with JAWS.

Regards,
venkatesh