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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Thu, May 12 2011 8:42AM
Subject: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
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Hi everyone

I am wondering if there is a tool or short cut that can analyze web
pages for presence of technologies like JQuery or AJAX.
There is a page: http://www.syslumadur.is which has a list of items
that produces a menus only when the mouse is used to hover over them.
It clearly breaks the "keyboard only" accessibility criteria of WCAG
and my screen reader does not even recognize these as links.
I am wondering if I can detect the technology used to generate these
with some software analytical tool, rather than reading through the
web page code, some sort of a quick analysis of the underlying
technologies.
I have used some accessibility evaluators and there is some of this
type of analysis in there, but sometimes it would be handy to detect
the presence of technologiessuch as ajax or flash in a web page
without running full scale accessibility evaluation.
Thanks
-Birkir

From: Angela French
Date: Thu, May 12 2011 9:48AM
Subject: Re: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
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Birkir - there is something very odd about the menu system on the page you provide a link to. In IE 8 and FF when I use my mouse to hover on any of the navigation links in the top navigation, it does NOT produce the drop down sub menus. However, if I use my mouse to click on any one of the menu items, the sub menu will is displayed and thereafter I can hover over any other link and produce its sub menu.

Angela French


I am wondering if there is a tool or short cut that can analyze web pages for presence of technologies like JQuery or AJAX.
There is a page: http://www.syslumadur.is which has a list of items that produces a menus only when the mouse is used to hover over them.
Thanks
-Birkir

From: David Dorward
Date: Thu, May 12 2011 10:06AM
Subject: Re: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
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On 12 May 2011, at 15:39, Birkir R. Gunnarsson wrote:
> I am wondering if there is a tool or short cut that can analyze web
> pages for presence of technologies like JQuery or AJAX.

The use of either of these isn't going to automatically introduce accessibility
problems, so that doesn't seem like a particularly worthwhile goal.

> There is a page: http://www.syslumadur.is which has a list of items
> that produces a menus only when the mouse is used to hover over them.
> It clearly breaks the "keyboard only" accessibility criteria of WCAG
> and my screen reader does not even recognize these as links.

This could be achieved with or without jQuery (or any other JS library)
and with or without Ajax (and Ajax wouldn't be very useful for this task)

> I am wondering if I can detect the technology used to generate these
> with some software analytical tool, rather than reading through the
> web page code, some sort of a quick analysis of the underlying
> technologies.

I suspect it would be relatively easy (although computationally expensive
to do in bulk) to programatically point a web browser at a page, determine
which elements feature event handers that depend on mouse interaction and
see if they were keyboard accessible.

Determining if the mouse events were purely decorative, or if any related
keyboard interaction was a sufficient equivalent would be harder and likely
require manual intervention.

I think that asking questions like "Is there content that can only be revealed
with a mouse?" and "Is there any content that is inserted with JS that is not
easily discoverable to screen reader / braille display / etc users?" is far
more useful then "Is a particular JS library used?" and "Does JavaScript send
requests to the server?" (The answer to both of those questions is very
frequently going to be "yes" these days.

--
David Dorward
http://dorward.me.uk

From: John E Brandt
Date: Thu, May 12 2011 1:51PM
Subject: Re: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
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This "feature" does not work in FF4.

In IE9 when you hover over the menu items at the top of the page, the page
refreshes automatically. IE9 also reveals some statement about add-ons not
being installed.

FWIW, I don't see this as being accessible at all and very
difficult/impossible to use.

~j

John E. Brandt
www.jebswebs.com
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
207-622-7937
Augusta, Maine, USA

From: Jeevan Reddy
Date: Fri, May 13 2011 5:27AM
Subject: Re: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
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I do agree it is very inaccessible!
there should be some tool to detect technology. If somebody implements this
kind of feature in WAVE Accessibility tool bar, i could be handy!

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 1:20 AM, John E Brandt < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> This "feature" does not work in FF4.
>
> In IE9 when you hover over the menu items at the top of the page, the page
> refreshes automatically. IE9 also reveals some statement about add-ons not
> being installed.
>
> FWIW, I don't see this as being accessible at all and very
> difficult/impossible to use.
>
> ~j
>
> John E. Brandt
> www.jebswebs.com
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> 207-622-7937
> Augusta, Maine, USA
>
>
>

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Fri, May 13 2011 5:54AM
Subject: Re: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
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I guess, in retrospect, the situation I am contemplating is probably
too tricky to be easily solved with code.
The reason I initially asked was that I am a blind tested, and I only
use keyboard, so any mouse-only feature of a page is something that it
is hard for me to detect.
I asked a sighted colleague of mine because the group of words on the
page looked like links, but Jaws did not announce them as such, so I
was wondering what they were.
But if something is inaccessible from the keyboard, a blind person who
only uses the keyboard will not find out about them without sighted
help.
If some kind of technology analysis could be run on a page it might
indicate the likelyhood of something being only accessible from the
keyboard, so that a blind user could get an idea of the possible
presence of those elements, and could then seak sighted assistance to
investigate the page.
But, as has been pointed out, the use of AJAX doesnotnecessary mean
the pageis inaccessible, it depends on the specific use, the
screenreader etc.


On 5/13/11, Jeevan Reddy < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I do agree it is very inaccessible!
> there should be some tool to detect technology. If somebody implements this
> kind of feature in WAVE Accessibility tool bar, i could be handy!
>
> On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 1:20 AM, John E Brandt < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
>> This "feature" does not work in FF4.
>>
>> In IE9 when you hover over the menu items at the top of the page, the page
>> refreshes automatically. IE9 also reveals some statement about add-ons not
>> being installed.
>>
>> FWIW, I don't see this as being accessible at all and very
>> difficult/impossible to use.
>>
>> ~j
>>
>> John E. Brandt
>> www.jebswebs.com
>> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>> 207-622-7937
>> Augusta, Maine, USA
>>
>>
>>

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Mon, May 16 2011 11:21AM
Subject: Re: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
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Some automated products analyze JavaScript for event handlers, and can
detect some Mouse only events. This is not perfect and is one
difficulty of testing without some sighted assistance at some points
during the testing process.