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Re: Prefilled password fields and screen readers

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From: Moore,Michael
Date: Sep 23, 2009 7:15AM

For all versions of JAWS that I am familiar with, 6.0 and up, this is the expected behavior when you tab into the field. You can determine how many characters have been entered by navigating through the field by character. (left or right arrow keys) JAWS says "star" for each character in the field. I have been told that early versions of JAWS would read the password in the clear, defeating the purpose of a "secret" password. Oddly enough, I have seen this open reading of the user's password in some windows applications including a "secure" flash drive that I tested recently. This is likely due to an error in how the password field was coded in the application.

Mike Moore