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Re: Sharepoint 2010 Accessibility

for

From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Feb 23, 2011 7:39AM

Hi Margit,

Many thanks for your feedback, and I would also like to hear more if
anyone has more to add. Regarding my initial question, FWIW, now I have
done some more testing, I found the 'Accessibility Mode' to be pretty
useless, in fact maybe worse than useless. This is because with the
'A11y mode' enabled certain parts of the ribbon controls (at least in my
testing) seemed to become inaccessible/invisible/were taken out
completely from the screen reader/document tree.

This effectively rendered controls that were initially accessible with
'A11y mode' off, inaccessible with 'A11y mode' on. Hence my desire for
feedback.

On a positive note, many of the ribbon controls etc were already
accessible, and the interface has a *lot* of WAI-ARIA functionality for
various controls. I just don't know if this mode switching is to do with
triggering application mode on or off with the screen reader (which
brings it's own challenges) or what, but I don't think it is.

It looked like the context sensitive switching of the ribbon could be
problematic also, as context seems to switch on mouse focus IIRC, and
the screen reader user could be caught out but I am not really sure if
this is a real issue for a screen reader user, or just merely
presentational.

I often find that when apps have bespoke 'modes' etc it takes time for
the user to 'get' them..so if I am missing something, will someone
please enlighten me?

Thanks

Josh


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