WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Inactive Buttons - ALT Tags?

for

From: Jared Smith
Date: Dec 22, 2005 10:20AM


Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
>>Some screen readers will not read form elements that are truly
>>set to be disabled (disabled="disabled").
>
>
> Jared - do you have specifics?

The problem (at least in JAWS) is that disabled form elements are not read
when navigating through the form. They are not 'navigable'. They are read
if you simply let the screen reader read though the contents of the page,
but are skipped when tabbing through the links/form elements of the page,
which is how most forms are going to be completed.

Visually one could see that the form element is there, but disabled. A
screen reader user likely will not even know it exists.

Jared