WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Web Analytics

for

From: Ryan Hemphill
Date: Apr 10, 2012 1:37PM

Hi Lucy, I understand what you are saying. I get it - I really do, but
technology-wise it's just not going to work in a Rich Internet App
environment. It isn't about what I want - I would much rather not have to
worry about the differences, it's a royal pain in the neck - but there are
only 3 screen readers that can truly handle Rich Internet apps at this time
(Focus Management and ARIA support) and the rest wouldn't be able to use
most those sites at all even if they wanted to. Granted I haven't worked
with ChromeVox much yet and that is a possible 4th.

It's annoying, it's upsetting and a whole list of other things that
shouldn't be said in public - but logistically, I can't see how we can move
forward and avoid these things. There is simply too much noise and most
dev/design teams would throw up their hands if they were dealing with a RIA
that needed to be made accessible, just like the guy at Google expressed.
This may be the reason they created their own SR. That being said, I have
been hammering away at that particular plugin and it doesn't work very
nicely in the RIA version of Gmail at all - or maybe I haven't figured out
how to use it just yet.

In most cases I would not be coding up tables or things like that any
differently - it's when we start getting into the interactive aspects.
Jumping back and forth through focus management techniques. Being able
to drop focus onto modal windows and use it in several different methods
without the screen reader going up in flames is a perfect example. I
actually had to take the AEGIS plugin (considered fully accessible, for
those who don't know) for modal/dialog and revamp it so that it would
behave like a typical modal window and work across multiple screen readers.
Part of fixing it required me to actually remove the role="dialog"
attribute because it seriously screwed up our ability to extend its usage.
ARIA actually REDUCED the accessibility of the widget. Imagine that! And
it didn't have the same effects on different SRs (NVDA and JAWS) until we
played around with it for some time. I can tell you some other bugs that
would have been introduced if we'd kept the native version, one of which
has the potential to break the whole site and kill the virtual buffer
permanently in JAWS, by the way. VoiceOver hasn't been handled yet, but
making that one work requires a different tweak to pull it off. Does it
matter? I would say yes. Purchasing textbooks cross-platform should
definitely be a priority use case for screen reader users. Would that
require compatibility hacks? Also yes.

This isn't something I love spending my time doing. It's something that
has to be done to insure accessibility of the site, which in this case is
for purchasing textbooks, by the way. SRs like Windows Eyes don't do focus
management at all, so we didn't even bother testing that SR because it
simply can't handle the interactive requirements of the site. Could we
make this site work for all SRs? Yes, we could as a basic page with no
bells and whistles at all. Could we make the site work for all SRs and also
have rich internet behaviors which involve focus management and possibly
ARIA attributes? NO WAY. Can I tell the marketing team to cease using
these features? They would laugh me right out of the room.

I go back to what I said before - we can't move forward if we're constantly
expecting to wait for the AT companies to get their act together and all
pull in the accessibility row boat in tandem. There is a good chance many
of the SRs aren't going to be considered usable for the web at all in a
short while, such as Windows Eyes, if they don't get their act together.

All that being said, I do appreciate your passion for the topic.

Ryan



On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Lucy Greco < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Hello:
> there would be no point in determining that a screen reader user is
> accessing your website because every single screen reader works differently
> than the other. You can't go out and detect every single competitive
> screen reader and expect to have a modified version of your website. So
> are you going to code your tables differently for JAWS then you would with
> chrome vox? Are you going to make your website change to voiceover
> compatible or are you going to work with NVDA or window eyes. Maybe the
> visitor is using guide or the full supernova suite.
>
> It's none of our business what the person is using to access our website I
> know there are people out there still using links but we don't code for
> that either. I know it's already been said on this thread but equal access
> means you made a good site that works for as many people as possible. Who
> cares what screen reader they're using. Who cares if they're using a
> screen reader the website should work and work for everyone. I don't want
> Amazon to know if I'm blind or not I don't want you to know if I'm blind or
> not I just want you to consider me a potential visitor to your website and
> make it work.
>
> Once all this is been said and done as a trainer I need to be able to test
> something at home on my machine and understand how it works then go to a
> client system and not have any surprises because they might be using an
> earlier version of the screen reader or the browser or the OS.
>
> Lucy Greco
> Assistive Technology Specialist
> Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
> (510) 643-7591
> http://attlc.berkeley.edu
> http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
>
>
>