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AJAX accessibility issue

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From: Ritz, Courtney L. (GSFC-7500)
Date: Mar 22, 2012 8:45AM

Hi all,

Apologies if this topic has already been discussed on-list. Because it's a rather last-minute issue, I haven't had time to dig through the archives.

We have a Web application here that uses some AJAX in at least one Web form. I can't link to the Web app because it's password-protected and behind our firewall, sorry. In this form, the user selects an item, which causes some new form fields to appear for that selected item. As a JAWS user, when I select one of these items, I get no feedback whatsoever that anything has occurred at all.

The developer is currently trying some of the suggestions demonstrated on the Juicy Studios site. While they work, they require me to turn off the JAWS virtual PC cursor in order to hear the notification that the action has taken place. To me, while this is technically doable, it requires extra steps that the average JAWS user here isn't going to wish to bother with. Not only that, I don't know how or if this works with other screen readers.

Are there any better solutions to this that I can suggest to the developer, or is the best solution to find a non-AJAX method for performing these functions? Whatever we go with has to be able to be considered Section 508 compliant, obviously.

Thanks much.

Courtney