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Re: Alternatives to LEGEND for a radio button?

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Sep 8, 2009 11:40AM

Geoff,

From the JAWS help file:
If you do not wish to hear the "fieldset" legend information, disable it in Configuration Manager, Verbosity Options. Select the button for the verbosity level you are using. In the Speech Output Types list, move to the Control Group Name check box and press SPACEBAR to clear the check mark. Select Ok to accept your changes, select Ok again, then save the open configuration file to save your settings. For more information, refer to Verbosity Options.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick

Senior Product Manager, Accessibility

Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED>


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Geof Collis
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 1:29 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Alternatives to LEGEND for a radio button?

Hi Andrew

I wasn't aware of that, the only thing I can see
is element access, would that be it? I dont like
to turn anything off since I need to hear
everything that is going on because I do accessibility audits and hand code.

cheers

Geof


At 12:50 PM 9/8/2009, you wrote:
>Geoff,
>Are you aware that you can turn off the voicing
>of the legend for controls contained in the fieldset?
>
>I think that Evan said it best earlier - that
>the legend with the fieldset is currently the
>best way to establish a semantic association
>between the radios or checkboxes and the group
>label, and how it is voiced is up to the screen reader application.
>
>Even if all web developers decided that they
>would all skip fieldset and legend and would all
>use an HTML heading before a set of radio
>buttons, you still would need to deal with how
>any given assistive technology supports that
>convention. If you don't like the way JAWS
>reads HTML, you should absolutely raise the issue with Freedom Scientific.
>
>Thanks,
>AWK
>
>Andrew Kirkpatrick
>
>Senior Product Manager, Accessibility
>
>Adobe Systems
>
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Geof Collis
>Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 12:43 PM
>To: WebAIM Discussion List
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Alternatives to LEGEND for a radio button?
>
>Hi Darrel
>
>In the case of radio buttons JAWS tells me how
>many to choose from, checkboxes aren't but it is
>just as easy to tab over them, out of JAWS mode
>and hit the space bar to select which ones I
>want. I personally just need text in front of the
>list of items telling me to make my choice as follows:
>
>1)What are your favourite foods,please check all that apply:
>chees
>eggs
>onions
>
>2)What are your favourite colours, please check all that apply:
>
>blue
>red
>green
>
>and so on.
>
>It seems to me that forms are changing to the
>point of being noisy, or too much information
>that I dont need to hear, I'm of the mindset of
>keeping it simple. Perhaps I'm alone on this but
>I understand breaking up information into
>paragraphs headings and lists but forms are
>different because of the intricacy of them, it'd
>be like anouncing a new paragraph or line everytime I read an article.
>
>Having said that, if I had to choose the lesser
>of 2 evils I'd use headings instead of legend.
>I'm not aware that JAWS announces a heading the same way it does legend.
>
>cheers
>
>Geof
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Geof, you mentioned the following:
> >
> > > I just want the  form to be a form, not something cooked up to make
> > > it look good for the sighted or pass some suspect guideline and I
> > > want the least amount of chatter from JAWS. I dont want my form
> > > broken up by headings either. Then again maybe I'm asking to much.
> >
> >In your opinion, how would you prefer that a group of checkboxes be
> >identified? For instance, if this were a list of checkboxes with
> >labels:
> >
> >cheese
> >eggs
> >onions
> >
> >How would you prefer they be grouped? It seems to me that there needs
> >to be some sort of way to identify those three form fields and their
> >labels as "Choose your omelet ingredients" but I'm not entirely sure
> >what I should be using mark-up wise to accomplish that. Legend seemed
> >like the standard answer per web standards but due to both visual
> >rendering and verbose audio rendering, it seems like the worst option.
> >An H2 sounds like it might be OK as it should only be read once. The
> >key is to make sure it *is* read at least once in most screen readers
> >(rather that skipped over when in forms mode).
> >
> >-Darrel
> >