WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Proper way to hide content from a screen reader

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Nov 17, 2009 1:05PM

Put the content in Adobe Air and it won't be seen by the screen reader. Ha ha. A joke only.

And a timely joke at that - today we released the public beta preview of AIR 2.0 which introduces support for assistive technologies via MSAA. You can try it out at http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/air2.html.

AWK



-----Original Message-----
From: D A [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 11:36 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Proper way to hide content from a screen reader

>> Is there a more proper way to do that?
>
> Because the content is presumably revealed with javascript, you might
> consider generating the content and injecting it into the document
> entirely with javascript.

@jared:

That does seem like the more fool-proof way. I could easily insert the
content via an ajax call if need be.

> If the item is not hidden from sighted viewers of the page why would you
> want to hide it from screen reader users?

@chuck:

It is hidden from sighted viewers.

> Even better consider using JS to create a dialog box that allows the user to extend the time.

@mike:

As it is now, the DIV with display:none is just a holder of the
content. It's content I figured was part of the page, but isn't
relevant until a certain period of time elapses. When it's time to
trigger the actual timer visually (and hopefully aurally), we'll be
launching a modal window, visually screening out the application, and
then placing the timeout message in the modal window. I do (likely)
need to ensure that when displayed, this takes focus.

Thanks everyone!

-Darrel