WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

JAWS repeats itself on checkboxes and radio buttons

for

From: Marco Maertens
Date: Jun 21, 2010 1:51PM

Hi,

I'm running into a problem where JAWS 11 (both 32- and 64-bit versions) with Firefox 3.6.3 consistently reads out properly coded radio buttons and check boxes twice.

For instance, if you try the radio buttons demonstrated on the WebAIM techniques page at this address:

http://www.webaim.org/techniques/forms/controls

The page (visually) shows something like this:

Choose a shipping method:
(radio button) Overnight
(radio button) Two day
(radio button) Ground

... but JAWS reads the following:

Choose a shipping message colon
Choose a shipping message colon
radio button not checked overnight overnight
radio button not checked two day two day
radio button not checked ground ground

I've confirmed and reproduced this behavior on a rather complicated site we're working on for a client, on a super-simple test page, on eBay.com, and on WebAIM.org (as shown above). The problem does not occur when using IE7 (I have not yet tested IE8).

The JAWS data sheet says it works with Firefox. It looks to me like a compatibility problem between JAWS and Firefox. But this seems like a rather big problem. Is anyone else familiar with this? I've searched around and haven't found much of anything. Our client is asking why the page is read out so strangely in JAWS.

Thanks in advance for insights or input!

-Marco.

Marco Maertens
Developer and Web Accessibility Specialist
Empathy Lab
610-572-2371