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Re: research on location of submit buttons

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Apr 2, 2009 1:15PM

Changing the tab order is not a good solution. I have seen utter confusion
during screen reader testing with sites that do this. The problem is that
the content is read out in one order in 'virtual cursor' mode (i.e. normal
reading mode) but the order changes when JAWS is in 'forms mode'.

If the user jumps in and out of 'forms mode' (as they often do), they cannot
understand why the page appears to be changing all the time.

Can you not present the opinions of this list as evidence that the design is
bad?

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Angela French
Sent: 02 April 2009 19:42
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] research on location of submit buttons

I know this will fail (or cause unhappiness among) data entry folks who use
keyboard instead of mouse. Though perhaps setting up a tab order could help
alleviate this.

This is an internal application and I do not know whether any of the
possible users will be on assistive technologies.
I was hoping I could get them to change it before it even gets out the door
for user testing if I could back it up with a little research.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Green [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 2:46 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] research on location of submit buttons



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Angela French
Sent: 01 April 2009 21:19
To: ' <EMAIL REMOVED> '
Subject: [WebAIM] research on location of submit buttons

I am hoping that someone can direct me to some definitive research that has
been done about the best position of form action buttons (submit buttons) on
a web page with a form. I am testing an application built by our
development team and the submit buttons (multiple possible actions) in some
cases, are NOT located at the bottom of the form. They are in the left hand
column which also serves as the navigation area. "Ouch" you say? I know.
Now I need some research to back up my suggestion that it be changed.

Thanks for any links to studies/white papers written on this subject.

Angela French
Internet Specialist
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
http://www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com/>;



Breaking long-standing web design conventions is almost always a bad idea.
Rather than look to research, I suggest you do some user testing. All my
experience of user testing suggests that your design is going to fail badly
for some user groups.

Has anyone actually done any research into putting form controls in
non-intuitive locations?

Steve Green
Director
Test Partners Ltd