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Re: Accessible conditional form fields

for

From: adam solomon
Date: Oct 26, 2010 12:45PM

From our experience with JAWS 9, the jquery functions should be picked up by
Jaws so that if it is display:none the reader should not read it. (We have
found rare situations where display none content was in fact read by Jaws,
but this is a bug. Best to test it out if you have access to a screen
reader). In any event, as long as the conditional field comes after the
associated radio button (in the html sequence) you shouldn't have a problem,
since the conditional content will appear after the user's selection and
will not be missed. Don't forget fieldset/legend.

On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 7:37 PM, D A < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I have the following form structure for a set of fields. It consists
> of a radio button list where certain radio buttons may require
> additional content:
>
> radio button 1
> radio button 2
> conditional field for radio button 2
> radio button 3
> conditional field for radio button 3
>
> The interaction for the above is that we do not show the conditional
> fields unless the related radio button is selected. If radio button 2
> is selected, then the conditional field appears below.
>
> This works visually as an interaction. I'm not trying to decide what's
> the preferred way to make this accessible.
>
> My impression is that one would want to read all 3 radio buttons
> without the conditional fields. Upon selected one of the radio
> buttons, THEN read the conditional fields.
>
> At the moment, we're using jQuery to hide the conditional fields until
> the radio button is selected. To hide it, jQuery sets them to
> 'display:none'.
>
> My understanding is that should prevent the field fun being read
> within a screen reader. Is that correct? Should we also set the
> conditional fields to disabled?
>
> Once the conditional fields are exposed (display: block) would they
> automatically be then read via the screen reader (given they are next
> in the tab order)?
>
> Any thoughts/gotchas?
>
> -DA
>