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Re: does datepicker have to be accessible

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From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Feb 8, 2011 8:00AM

Birkir,
This is an interesting problem - JAWS does allow you to configure the reading for repeated letters, but this makes reading tedious in other ways (e.g. when someone puts a line of periods or dashes as part of their email sig). The default setting also means that if my phone number is 123-456-0000 that you won't hear it correctly, won't it?

I wonder whether screen reader vendors have considered parsing the text and analyzing whether there is a phone number or a common date identifier. They should - I doubt that many people will stop using mm/dd/yyyy since it is short, and also avoids confusion for people who might enter the date as dd/mm/yyyy....

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir Rúnar Gunnarsson
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2011 9:33 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] does datepicker have to be accessible

I would be fine with an input edit field, but I do recommend the
solution with 3 listboxes, month, day, year (or whichever order). This
will also simplify validation on the server side of the input format.
One thing I, as a user, find annoying is when the mm/dd/yyyy is in the
label for the field, Jaws does not clearly distinguish between this
and mm/dd/yy, so I would suggest a sample format such as (please enter
your date, for instance 01/01/2000). This way the format is conveyed
unambiguously to someone who only uses speech.
If there are limits on th dates you can enter (such as a booking
system that only accepts bookings till the end of the year), please
indicate that as well.
hth
-B

On 2/8/11, Susan Grossman < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>> Scenario: a textbox meant to have a date written in it. A button next to
> it
> (calendar icon) which opens the datepicker to choose a date. One can enter a
> date manually into the textbox, as well. Does the datepicker need to be
> accessible, or is it enough that the user can manually enter a date into it
> without making use of the datepicker?
>
>
> --- Often the accessible date-pickers are more work than just typing it in
> and is something you should consider. As long as the format is clear, as
> stated by others, having a text box is just fine.
>
> There's nothing wrong with enhancing things for a user who doesn't need AT's
> as long as the main function works well for all. You can use colors the
> color-blind can't see as long as the contrast is there for them....
>
>
> --
> *Susan R. Grossman*
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>