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RE: More fun with forms and JAWS

for

From: sean keegan
Date: Aug 24, 2006 4:50PM

Hi Mike,

> Finally, is the behavior of JAWS 6.1 typical of other screen readers.
> Does anyone have experience with Window Eyes, HAL, JAWS 7.1 etc.

I can answer a bit with Window-Eyes 5.5. By default, Window-Eyes seems to
not read the <legend> information unless you go into the Verbosity and tell
it to insert a beginning/end message for fieldsets. Then, W-E only reads
when you are entering the fieldset or exiting the fieldset - it does not
appear to read as you move from radio button to radio button whether or not
you are in forms mode.

Also, it seems that W-E truncates the legend text length such that you have
to manually navigate line-by-line to listen to the full <legend> text again.
This seems to happen with a legend length greater than 80 characters.

I tried a few other variations of using <ul> or <dl> structure as these were
suggested methods in books on Web standards. Interestingly, when I set up a
definition list and navigated to each form field with the "F" hotkey in JAWS
5.x and 7.0, the content within the <dl> tag was read followed by the answer
(content in the <dd>), much like you would expect for the <legend> element.
This worked for JAWS 5.x and 7.0, but now it does not work for JAWS 7.1. I
love it when JAWS changes how it works from version to version...

In any case, as soon as you turned on the "forms mode", only the
fieldset/legend combination was recognized with JAWS. Sorry, I don't have
any info on Supernova/HAL right now.

Take care,
sean


Sean Keegan
Web Accessibility Instructor
High Tech Center Training Unit, California Community Colleges