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Re: AJAX accessibility issue

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From: Ritz, Courtney L. (GSFC-7500)
Date: Mar 22, 2012 11:03AM

Hi Tony,

The new controls are shown, but JAWS does not announce that anything has changed.

Courtney

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Tony Olivero
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:51 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] AJAX accessibility issue

When you say you get no feedback, do you mean there is no annunciation by JAWS, or the buffer does not update to show the new controls?

Can you find controls by manually tabbing or arrowing?

There are potentially different solutions to either scenario.

Tony


On 3/22/12, Ritz, Courtney L. (GSFC-7500) < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> 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
>