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Re: How to Make a Facebook Chat Widget Automatically Accessible

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Nov 15, 2011 7:06AM

Mr Bryan

Great idea as always. I would say great implementation as well,
however, there is a bit of a problem, I am knit picky I know.
I go to the demo page (with Jaws 13 and IE9) .. type in my name as
instructed and hit "start Chat".
I get the message "loading, please wait" .. and I wait .... and I wait
.... and I wait ..., and I am still waiting. ;)
Seems like this is not working at the moment, at least with this
software combination.
Cheers
-B

On 11/15/11, Bryan Garaventa < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> This is something I've been thinking about off and on over the last couple
> years. My family uses Facebook chat, so I figured it would be pretty cool to
> be able to do the same using the website. Not really as it turned out.
> Conceptually it wouldn't take too much to make it work though, so about six
> months ago, I wrote detailed instructions, lovingly crafted with fabulous
> pros, showing the Facebook folks how this could be accomplished with minimal
> effort and maximum impact for everyone.
>
> I thought it was brilliant; a true masterpiece;
> they ignored me of course...
>
> So, I decided to do it myself anyway, and here it is! Just as described...
>
> The Accessible Chat Dialog Module is a Facebook-style UI component that
> renders an automatically accessible chat dialog for screen reader and
> keyboard only users.
> Instructions:
> 1) Type your name and activate the Start Chat button to open the chat
> dialog,
> then type into the Message field and press Enter to submit a chat message.
> 2) Mouse users can drag the chat window to a new fixed location by holding
> down the left-mouse button on any textual area of the chat dialog.
> 3) New messages will automatically be announced to screen reader users when
> they arrive.
> 4) Screen reader users can press Ctrl+` to hear the last 5 messages
> announced when the Message text field has focus.
>
> The ability to drag the chat dialog to a new location on the viewport isn't
> something Facebook provides, but I thought it would be a nice touch
> anyway... :)
>
> Now, this is important, the chat dialog is a live server application, so
> anything you type will be seen by every person around the world who happens
> to have the dialog open at the same time, regardless whether it is running
> from the website or locally using the download, so please play nicely...
>
> Demo: http://whatsock.com/modules/accessible_chat_dialog_module/demo.htm
>
> All the best,
> Bryan
>