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Re: Non-modal window after time delay

for

From: JP Jamous
Date: Jun 7, 2017 6:22AM


See my notes after your questions.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Fernand van Olphen
Sent: Wednesday, June 7, 2017 6:45 AM
To: ' <EMAIL REMOVED> ' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Non-modal window after time delay

Hi everyone,

On our website a non-modal window appears after a almost half a minute, asking visitors if they want to participate in a survey.
(For example on this page: https://www.denhaag.nl/home/bewoners/loket/to/Grofvuil-of-tuinafval-wegbrengen-afvalbrengstations.htm. You will have to wait 25 seconds before the window scrolls into view, in the left hand corner)

Two questions:


1) The window appears some time after the page has loaded. Is such a time-delay allowed by WCAG?
Off the top of my head, I don't think why this should be an issue. I cannot think of any WCAG SC that would be violated. If I missed one, blame it on lack of caffeine intake.


2) How can I make the appearance of this window known to users of assistive technology?
There are various ways, the most important thing to me as a screen reader user is do not set focus on your pop-up as I am reading in the body of the page. You'd really tick me off as I would have to navigate down to where I was. I would suggest some ideas.

A. Use a hidden text prior to the site header informing me that after 25 seconds a survey window will pop up. Do not surprise me later.
B. When the pop-up shows, use aria-live="polite" to inform me of the window that just popped up. A short description will suffice. If I want to review it, I can navigate to it.
C. Hide the pop-up from screen readers using aria-hidden="true" and provide the link to the survey before the site header as the page loads. This way, I can hit enter on the link which would activate a JavaScript and show the pop-up using aria-hidden="false"

As obvious above, there are multiple ways you can handle this. It goes back to your audience. The most important thing to me is forcing my cursor to bounce from where I am at in the DOM back to the top of the survey. Most likely, I would leave the site and not take your survey or revisit that site again.

I must remind you that this is my own personal opinion as a user. If you are looking at this from a general prospective of all users, then aria-live would be the best bet as it will alert users and ensure to keep the user's cursor in its current position in the DOM.


Regards,

Fernand van Olphen
Accessibility Advisor
Municipality of The Hague

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