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Re: Reading OPTGROUP with JAWS

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: May 10, 2002 2:53PM


On 4/17/02 3:29 PM, Cohen, Lisa A. ( <EMAIL REMOVED> ) wrote:

> Andrew, I'm confused...
> Does JAWS say the group values (OPTGROUP) for you? Which keystrokes get him
> to move to (and say) another OPTGROUP?
> JAWS only says the group values if you include them as the content of the
> <option> tag. What I=B9ve always heard is that browsers that ignore optgroup
> will just read the <option> tag, so including the optgroup name redundantly is
> necessary. Browsers such as MacIE will use the label tag for the display and
> will not display the redundant information.
>=20
> IE6 is half and half. It displays the optgroup name, but it doesn=B9t use the
> label for the <option>, so the group name is in bold at before the first item
> in the optgroup, but then each option also includes the optgroup name that was
> included for backward compatibility. If you are using the keyboard to access
> the combo box, the optgroup names are skipped in IE6.
>=20
> Also, I am running IE 5.5 and it doesn't show the OPTGROUP at all... you see
> it in bold? Haven't tried 6.0 because most of my government users will not
> have it for a while.
>=20
> My IE5.5 is tied up, so I can=B9t verify this, but I=B9m sure you=B9re right.
>=20
> A correction to my last post =AD only Mac IE and IE6 are supporting optgroup as
> outlined above. The other browsers display adequate information if the
> optgroup name is used redundantly for backward compatibility.
>=20
> Andrew
>=20
>=20
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Andrew Kirkpatrick [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 2:45 PM
>> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Subject: Re: Reading OPTGROUP with JAWS
>>=20
>> Can you define "support" in this case? Netscape 4.7, Opera 5, IE5.5 & 6, and
>> MacIE5& 5.1 (undoubtedly there are others, these are the ones I checked) all
>> support optgroup. I've attached a sample file. When viewing this example in
>> Ie, JAWS reads the options fine.
>>=20
>> Mac IE does what I imagine people consider "supporting" optgroup. When the
>> combo box is opened, four items appear, some with sub-menus. Very clean
>> visually. =20
>>=20
>> Win IE makes the optgroup name bold and not selectable in its implementation.
>> A user with a screen reader will hear the optgroup name for each sub-item,
>> but the information is available. It would be great if screen readers
>> supported an auitory experience similar to the visual experience in MacIE.
>>=20
>> AWK
>>=20
>> On 4/17/02 2:04 PM, Paul Bohman ( <EMAIL REMOVED> ) wrote:
>>=20
>>> The only technology that I'm aware of that supports optgroup is Netscape
>>> 6.x. I wish others did, but I don't think they do. Maybe the screen reader
>>> Emacspeak for Unix/Linux does, but I'm not familiar enough with it to know.
>>> Emacspeak has support for everything it seems, so I wouldn't be surprised if
>>> it supports this feature.
>>>=20
>>>=20
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Cohen, Lisa A. [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 11:38 AM
>>>> To: WebAIM forum ( <EMAIL REMOVED> )
>>>> Subject: Reading OPTGROUP with JAWS
>>>>=20
>>>>=20
>>>> Hello,=20
>>>> (Apologies for cross-posting... desperately need an answer!)
>>>> I need to code a very long listbox in an HTML form. The HTML 4 spec shows
>>>> an example of using OPTGROUP to group OPTIONS within SELECT tags. But
>>>> this does not appear to work with JAWS (nor does IE 5.5 do anything with
>>>> OPTGROUP).
>>>>=20
>>>>=20

--=20
Andrew Kirkpatrick, Technical Project Coordinator
CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
125 Western Ave.
Boston, MA 02134
E-mail: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Web site: ncam.wgbh.org

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