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Re: are these modal popups screen reader accessible ?

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From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Nov 4, 2012 4:33AM

Thanks, I understand what you mean about jQuery UI.

I do have concerns with relying on jQuery to make redistributable
accessibility components though, which has to do with version drift.

What I mean by version drift, is when components or features are built using
a particular version of a third party API, then when that API is updated,
the component or feature may not work in the same manner as it did
previously.

I'm not speaking hypothetically, this happened to me several times in the
past. I originally started out building accessible components back at the
beginning of 2010, and was using the current version of jQuery at that time,
which I think was 1.4.4. Then, when 1.5 was released, I popped it in, and
found out that some of the processes that my component relied on were no
longer included in the updated version of jQuery, which broke my
accessibility.

After this happened to me a couple more times, I started to wonder, if I
build a scalable accessible component now, how can I be certain that it will
continue to be accessible three, five, ten, or fifteen years down the road
as new versions of jQuery keep coming out with process changes. My answer
was, I couldn't, and this would require constant monitoring and maintenance
to ensure that future API versions were compatible with related component
versions.

The only solution I could think of that would work across all web
technologies equally in a scalable manner, was to build a closed system that
had no third party process dependencies.

This way, there would never be a risk of version drift, and accessible
components tied into the system would be guaranteed to work accessibly now,
as well as twenty years from now, regardless whether it was included within
jQuery, YUI, GWT, Dojo, Ext JS, or by itself. It would simply keep working
accessibly, no matter how many processes were to change around it via third
party updates.

So this is why I built AccDC, and this is what it does.

Thank you for checking it out. I really do appreciate it.

All the best,
Bryan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Léonie Watson" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "'Bryan Garaventa'" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >; "'WebAIM Discussion
List'" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2012 9:16 AM
Subject: RE: [WebAIM] are these modal popups screen reader accessible ?


Bryan Garaventa wrote:
"I've also seen the same dialog, and it is a good one. Is the intent of this
dialog to be scalable though? For instance, can you add any content with the
same level of accessibility?"

I haven't implemented the jQueryUI widget myself. I should imagine it would
be possible to include additional content, but can't be sure without trying.
It does have the advantage of being derived from jQueryUI, which puts it in
easier reach for developers already using that library.

"This is important to me, because I designed this modal to be fully scalable
using any type of content, meaning that it can be styled to look like
anything, resized, moved, made draggable, and so on, and include any type of
content, while also maintaining the same level of accessibility
automatically. So, can you please tell me how this construct is not
accessible for screen reader users?"

I'm sorry, you misunderstood what I meant. The jQueryUI example was the most
accessible I'd come across at the time, before I was aware of your construct
(which seems equally accessible with a screen reader).

Léonie.