WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 13, 2011 5:54AM

I guess, in retrospect, the situation I am contemplating is probably
too tricky to be easily solved with code.
The reason I initially asked was that I am a blind tested, and I only
use keyboard, so any mouse-only feature of a page is something that it
is hard for me to detect.
I asked a sighted colleague of mine because the group of words on the
page looked like links, but Jaws did not announce them as such, so I
was wondering what they were.
But if something is inaccessible from the keyboard, a blind person who
only uses the keyboard will not find out about them without sighted
help.
If some kind of technology analysis could be run on a page it might
indicate the likelyhood of something being only accessible from the
keyboard, so that a blind user could get an idea of the possible
presence of those elements, and could then seak sighted assistance to
investigate the page.
But, as has been pointed out, the use of AJAX doesnotnecessary mean
the pageis inaccessible, it depends on the specific use, the
screenreader etc.


On 5/13/11, Jeevan Reddy < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I do agree it is very inaccessible!
> there should be some tool to detect technology. If somebody implements this
> kind of feature in WAVE Accessibility tool bar, i could be handy!
>
> On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 1:20 AM, John E Brandt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> This "feature" does not work in FF4.
>>
>> In IE9 when you hover over the menu items at the top of the page, the page
>> refreshes automatically. IE9 also reveals some statement about add-ons not
>> being installed.
>>
>> FWIW, I don't see this as being accessible at all and very
>> difficult/impossible to use.
>>
>> ~j
>>
>> John E. Brandt
>> www.jebswebs.com
>> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> 207-622-7937
>> Augusta, Maine, USA
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir R.
>> Gunnarsson
>> Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 10:39 AM
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List
>> Subject: [WebAIM] Detecting types of web technologies (JQuery/AJAX)
>>
>> Hi everyone
>>
>> I am wondering if there is a tool or short cut that can analyze web pages
>> for presence of technologies like JQuery or AJAX.
>> There is a page: http://www.syslumadur.is which has a list of items that
>> produces a menus only when the mouse is used to hover over them.
>> It clearly breaks the "keyboard only" accessibility criteria of WCAG and
>> my
>> screen reader does not even recognize these as links.
>> I am wondering if I can detect the technology used to generate these with
>> some software analytical tool, rather than reading through the web page
>> code, some sort of a quick analysis of the underlying technologies.
>> I have used some accessibility evaluators and there is some of this type
>> of
>> analysis in there, but sometimes it would be handy to detect the presence
>> of
>> technologiessuch as ajax or flash in a web page without running full scale
>> accessibility evaluation.
>> Thanks
>> -Birkir
>>