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Re: Focus for error messages

for

From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Apr 19, 2007 9:20AM

Hi Tedd,

> 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 do know that having to re-read an entire page (which could contain a
lot of content) is not in principle a good way for users to discover
that there is an error. A sighted user can obviously quickly scan the
page but a non sighted person relying on a linear output device like a
screen reader will pretty much have their head wrecked sharpish, to use
the technical terms :)

> So if
>> something has been ajax'ed to the screen, then would it not be read if a
>> screen reader reads the page again?

If there has been a page refresh and the user then chooses to give the
field focus again then yes.

I will have a look at your audio captcha, thanks for posting the link.

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

You are maybe using iframes because to their ability to receive focus,
but you could probably achieve the same effect by using an anchor/link
AFAIK wrapped in a positioned div.

Cheers

Josh


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