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Re: can screenreader user please test expanding content?

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From: Angela French
Date: Apr 7, 2011 10:45AM

Thank you Birkir. In your opinion is it problematic that the JAWS user doesn't realize that the new text has been revealed? In other words, is this expanding text just a display technique that is convenient for sighted users, but has little if no impact on screen reader users? If the "hidden" text is available to you, does it matter that it was hidden until the link was clicked on? In other words, how transparent is it to you that this expanding content block is even being used? Also, I'm wondering, I have read in the past that not all screen readers support display:none , or that this may be a configuration issue on your end. Is the block of text that is styled display:none really unavailable to you until you click on the linked <h2> headline, or can you just skip by the linked headline and read the copy that follows?

Angela

-----Original Message-----
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 4:39 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] can screenreader user please test expanding content?

Angela

To clarify what happens (IE8, Jaws 12 with latest update, Windows 7).
I open the link and load the page.
The page shows title, a heading level 1 sentence and then 4 links, each level 2.
I just see the link text, no indication of any kind that these links represent anything special, other than that this is a link and a heading, so the natural tendency, for me anyway, is to hit enter on the link to see what happens.
For each of the link I selected it and hit enter.
There is no announcement of any changes, no autorefresh or cursor movement of any kind, but when I arrow down I see the text now until I come to the next link.
The same event happens for all of them.
I am just about to study ARIA myself so I cannot give you any smrt insight into how it would work for you, but I would imagine that some type of view or control (like treeview) could be used here with states equal expanded or collapsed.
Another possibility would be to move the focus/cursor to the first letter of the displayed text, with Javascript.
(but this can be confusing for screen reader users, I certainly don't like it when the cursor takes off on me and moves without me telling it to).
Could you simply add text to the link that is hidden but tells screen readers something like (hit enter to expand text below this link)?
None of these are fantastic ideas and I will be urious to see what the pros do, but at lesat now you know how the screen reader behaves, at least Jaws 12.
hth
-b