WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Accessible table filtering options

for

From: Terrill Bennett
Date: Nov 8, 2010 6:27PM

Allison,


> Wow, Terrill, thanks so much for trying this out for us!

My pleasure! I contacted the original JQuery Filter author, Guido
Tapia. As with many developers, ARIA-Live is a new concept. But he's
going to look into adding the changes to his filter. Fingers crossed!

> However, I'm not experiencing anything other than the
> addition of the "Row count" line in the text with Mac's
> VoiceOver. I'm not sure ARIA is supported in VoiceOver, so

Unfortunately, I don't do Apples (I did own a Lisa, once). I have no
idea what the current status is for ARIA support, today. WebAIM has
an article that the footer says was last updated in January of 2010.
It says VoiceOver failed:

http://codetalks.org/wiki/index.php/Set_of_ARIA_Test_Cases#aria-live

> ...did you actually record
> what you heard with the other screen readers you tested
> somewhere?

I hadn't then, but I have now. And I only stumble around with two
readers: NVDA and JAWS. New links to new recordings further below...

> Was there some sort of interruption (I'm assuming
> it would probably happen after the user entered text into one
> of the filter fields, then left the field) that told you the
> number of table rows had changed?

ARIA-Live comes in flavors: off, assertive and polite.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-wai-aria-20100916/states_and_properties#aria-live
or: http://goo.gl/qPcU2

* In my original recording, assertive was being used. The reader
is supposed to stop what it's doing and announce the updated value of
the ARIA-Live region, so interruptions are supposed to happen if
you're a slow typist (and I am). There is a demo with a good
explanation of ARIA-Live using assertive, here:
http://accessibleajax.clcworld.net/simple/live_assertive.htm
or: http://goo.gl/0wLTX

* With polite, as explained in the link below, if the screen
reader is busy reading text you won't hear the counter in their demo
as it changes. When you command the reader to stop reading the page,
the numbers are again announced as they change. And no, the "missed"
numbers aren't stored and read later. Here is their demo and good
explanation of ARIA-Live using polite:
http://accessibleajax.clcworld.net/simple/live_polite.htm
or: http://goo.gl/UWWLx

JAWS seems to be a bit more tolerant than NVDA when "polite" is being
used while >> I << type in a filter. Again, I'm a slow typist - I get
a few announcements even with polite.

My recordings and demos have grown:

(New) Filter demo using polite:
http://bennett1.org/temp_stuff/filterTestPolite.htm

(New) NVDA, polite:
http://bennett1.org/temp_stuff/filterTestPoliteNV.mp3

(New) JAWS, polite:
http://bennett1.org/temp_stuff/filterTestPoliteJaws.mp3

(Old) Filter demo using assertive:
http://bennett1.org/temp_stuff/filterTest.htm

(New) JAWS, assertive:
http://bennett1.org/temp_stuff/filterTestJaws.mp3

(Old) NVDA, assertive:
http://bennett1.org/temp_stuff/filterFormFill.mp3

Hope this helps!

-- Terrill --

PS: for our music fans, try a different kind of ARIA (courtesy of Guido Tapia):
http://www.ariaawards.com.au/home.php