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Re: Focus for error messages

for

From: tedd
Date: Apr 19, 2007 9:00AM

At 2:56 PM +0100 4/19/07, Joshue O Connor wrote:
>JAWS in forms mode is actually JAWS interacting directly with the web
>interface/application itself. Otherwise the screen reader is interacting
>with a virtual version of the page via the OSM (Off Screen Model). Many
>screen readers use these methods and some interact directly through the
>DOM such as Supernova/HAL.
>
>tedd said:
>> you use a new window to show error messages, then that will be
>>provided to screen readers.
>
>Thats one way but this may not always be ideal. Also, if the DOM is
>being manipulated then these error messages may not be displayed at all
>as the page is not refreshed when dynamically manipulating the DOM. You
>may be able to trigger page refresh etc but I suppose this goes against
>the grain of dynamically generating content on the fly a la AJAX.
>
>> if you initiate a screen refresh of the current window, then
>>whatever errors that are new on that page (via ajax) will be made
>>accessible to screen readers as well.
>
>Could you please expand a little on how you suggest that will work?

I may be totally "out to lunch" on this, but in one of my experiments
writing an audio captcha, my blind testers reported that when a
screen refresh was initiated, their screen readers re-read
everything. So if something has been ajax'ed to the screen, then
would it not be read if a screen reader reads the page again?

I know this goes against the DOM manipulation thing, but that's the
problem screen readers have with ajax in the first place, right?

Also, another idea came to mind as I was typing this and that was to
use iframes. I think that iframes may cause screen readers to read
that portion of the new presentation (i.e., errors) without
re-reading the entire page again. I know it worked for me in my audio
captcha, please review this:

http://sperling.com/examples/captcha/

I use iframes to deliver the audio portion of the captcha. Perhaps
that may be a vehicle to deliver error messages.

Boy, I sure wish I could make living working on stuff like this --
there is so much opportunity to plug these holes.

Cheers,

tedd

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