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Re: Infinite scrolling and accessibility

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From: Steve Green
Date: Jan 9, 2013 3:05PM

In my view, infinite scrolling is perhaps the most stupid UI abomination I can recall in more than 30 years in IT. The user experience benefits are minimal and it creates massive usability and accessibility issues. It's pure willy-waving, done because it can be done, not because it benefits anyone.

To answer the OP's question, the behaviour depends on a number of factors. I just tested a Facebook page with Firefox 17 and JAWS 13. As you navigate down the page, new content is fed in seamlessly i.e. the virtual object model is not corrupted. Of course a blind person will not know this is happening, and may be confused by this apparently never-ending page. In the case of Facebook they might actually know it does this, but they won't know on sites that are new to them.

The fact that the centre column never ends means that it may not be straightforward to get to the content in the right-hand column. This is where different website designs may require different strategies. On Facebook you can press the H key repeatedly to get to a heading in the right-hand column, but that is only possible because the centre column contains almost no headings, which is an issue in itself. On other sites it may be more difficult.

The virtual object model did get confused when I used Ctrl+End to go to the end of the page (i.e. the end of the right-hand column) and navigate upwards. It was ok until the page scrolled up, at which point some more of the infinite content was pulled into the centre column. The focus then jumped from the right-hand column to somewhere in the centre column.

Our experience is that older (but still relatively new) JAWS versions are more prone to corruption of the virtual object model by dynamic content, but I have not yet done tests with older versions.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd