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Re: alternative to use of onChange in select menus

for

From: Angela French
Date: Jun 9, 2011 9:00AM

Thanks Deborah.

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of <EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2011 7:02 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] alternative to use of onChange in select menus

On Thu, 9 Jun 2011, <EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:

> Some folks argue that these folks are simply not using their keyboards correctly.

Since this behavior varies on a browser to browser level and is never documented (that I've ever seen) in any documentation aimed at users, calling this "not using their keyboards correctly"
would not be a particularly politic way of framing the argument, I would think.

From a user experience perspective, there is no way for a user looking at a web form to know whether a drop-down has been programmed with onChange or not. Even for mouse users with no accessibility needs, I've seen this cause problems, when they expect that they can change multiple form elements and then the page reloads immediately on changing a single drop-down.

But for a keyboard user, this is very annoying behavior. It's unlikely that many keyboard users will have figured out the "correct" ways to use their keyboards, because they can't tell when looking at the form if it is an onChange or not, so they won't be able to easily build patterns about what keyboard activities have what effects. From the user standpoint, after all, a form is a form, and the JavaScript events tied to the form controls are invisible until fired off.

As a voice (therefore effectively keyboard) user, I have rarely met an onChange form that was well enough designed not to be incredibly annoying.

-deborah