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RE: More fun with forms and JAWS

for

From: Moore, Michael
Date: Aug 25, 2006 7:10AM

Thanks Sean,

This is good info, I am not sure if it will change our standards here,
at least for internal, but I definitely think that we should encourage
the use of <select> over radio whenever practical to achieve the best
compromise. Its too bad that there is not a way get line wrapping into
the individual <option>s. Of course if we could do that, then we could
accomplish it with fieldsets too.

We have the same problems with the changes from version to version of
JAWS too. We are still on 6.1 because of the incompatibility between
JAWS 7.x and ZoomText, many members of our staff use both. We are
really nervous about what is going to happen when Vista comes along.
Our best information is that Freedom Scientific is struggling to be
ready, GW Micro is the closest of the screen reader builders, and that
the new interface is a major pain with any screen magnifier because of
the 3D.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of sean keegan
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 5:48 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: RE: [WebAIM] More fun with forms and JAWS

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



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