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Re: How do screen readers experience this image rotator?

for

From: Angela French
Date: May 18, 2011 3:39PM

Thanks Patrick. They are just pretty pictures of each of our 34 campus locations.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Patrick Burke
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 2:12 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] How do screen readers experience this image rotator?

Hi Angela,

With Jaws 12 (build 1158) & Firefox 4, I do indeed get the whole list. Some of the images seem to be repeated or split up, so there are 60 or so items. For some reason they are not reported as a list.

Scrolling image banners are very popular with designers, & usually very annoying for screen reader users. (Either because they refresh the page every time they scroll, or just introduce new content when you didn't expect it. So if I wanted to backtrack to reread something, I would find that what I was looking for had disappeared, without much clue as to why.) Fortunately you don't have those problems...

Overall I would say, consider what the purpose of the images is. In this case, do they show that the Board serves some parts of the state & not others? Or serves colleges at specific locations? In those situations, an explicit list or statement to that effect would be more useful.

If it's a series of images meant to evoke the varied landscapes of the state, then null alt text on the images might be best.

IN general, if anyone has an accessible solution for the scrolling banner construct, I and the devs on my campus could definitely use it!

Thanks much,
Patrick

At 01:41 PM 5/18/2011, Angela French wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I am once again asking for any screen reader users to help me out with
>some AT testing. I think I mentioned elsewhere, that I have been asked
>to help fix the many accessibility issues on this
>site: http://sbctc.edu/index.aspx .
>
>My question this time, is how screen reader users experience the set of
>rotating images that appears at the top of the News Releases on the
>home page. In the code it is presented as an <ul> with each picture (34
>of them) presented as a <li> that appears one at a time (to the sighted
>user).
>
>The first <li> in this list is a picture of "Edmonds", the second is
>"Wenatchee Valley", the third is "Bellevue".
>
>My fear is that screen readers users have to listen to the whole darn
>list of images. As there is no "skip to main content" link provided on
>this site, I expect that you would bail pretty quickly.
>
>I would be grateful to any of you who would take the time to test this
>out for me and let me know what you experienced and what AT you are using.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Angela French


--
Patrick J. Burke

Coordinator
UCLA Disabilities &
Computing Program

Phone: 310 206-6004
E-mail: burke <at> ucla. edu
Department Contact: <EMAIL REMOVED>