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Re: Showing / Hiding a Layer

for

From: Dean Hamack
Date: Apr 2, 2009 9:45AM

Hi David, responses inline:

> - JAWS read both of the Help icons as "What is this?" Shouldn't two links
> that do different things have different content? It seems like the first
> one
> should say, "What is a SuperFilter?" and the second one should say, "What
> are Personal Preferences?"

You're probably right. Good tip.

> - When I clicked Enter on the Help icon next to the SuperFilter link, the
> layer opened up fine. But when I asked JAWS to continue reading the page,
> it
> read the Personal Preferences link text and then its Help icon after that.

If you look at the source code, you will see why. The links are anchors that
jump to footnotes at the bottom of the page. You jumped to the first term's
definition at the bottom, and then back to the term. Then you just continued
reading everything else, including the next term's definition at the end.

> - When I ask JAWS to just read the entire page to me, it reads all of the
> help text at the end even though none of it is visible. I believe a better
> solution would be one in which the help text is only read when the user
> asks
> for it.

The problem with that method is that it won't work for people without
javascript enabled. I've done some research lately that indicates the number
of people who fall into this category is a lot lower than we've been
thinking. But it's still higher than the number of blind people surfing the
web. So I believe this is the lesser of two evils.

Dean Hamack
Lead Web Developer
Bushido Designs
Tel:(206)523-6705
www.bushidodesigns.net