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Re: Sharepoint 2010 Accessibility

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From: Margit Link-Rodrigue
Date: Feb 23, 2011 8:27AM

You might be able to get some answers about your questions regarding the
"more accessible mode" issues you found by posting on the SharePoint Team
blog. Tim McConnell is listed as a contact there for accessibility related
topics. It might be worth posting a comment there and see if you get a
response. The post I am referring to is:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=431.

-Margit

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 8:38 AM, Joshue O Connor < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> 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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