WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: ARIA - is it only for screen readers?

for

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Feb 9, 2013 4:57PM

According to twitter it can now be used for key board navigation with a
plugin for Firefox
http://t.co/2wXkJaSi

Lucia Greco
Web Access Analyst
IST-Campus Technology Services
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 289-6008 skype: lucia1-greco
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
Follow me on twitter @accessaces

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir R.
Gunnarsson
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2013 2:42 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] ARIA - is it only for screen readers?

Hey guys

I have spent 2 weeks on accessibility testing, lecturing, and working
with the I.T. community in Iceland on accessibility, fielding
questions, demonstrating issues,suggesting best practices etc.
This has over-all been a fun experience, positive, and finally I can
put my weeks of reading standards, testing technologies and such to
hopefully "good" use.
One thing that does bother me a bit is how cool ARIA can be, however,
anything I have read concerning ARIA indicates its use as a screen
reader solution, making it suitable for a very small subset of people
with disabilities.

What is the level of support for ARIA elsewhere:
Screen magnification
Dyslexia (software like Wynn from FS, essentially based on their
screen reading technology, should take suitable advantageof ARIA, I
hope)keyboard browsing or keyboard simulation in browsers (when
implementing tabbed browsing using the ARIA application and tabpanels,
will this benefit users with mobile impairments using keyboard
emulators, can people use this keyboard navigation in web browsers
directly?)
What, if any, is the support for ARIA landmarks, keyboard shortcuts
and other technologies in speech recognition software.

If nothing that supports ARIA and is not a screen reader exists now,
do we foresee a change to this in the near future?
ARIA is essentially a very cool technology to apply quick fixes and
enhanced user experience for screen readers. I have a hard time truly
selling it though, because while it is great for blind users, I need
to convince people it is useful to other groups, at least if I am to
recommend more complex ARIA implementations, such as the tabpanel I
mentioned above.
For a fairly neat tabpanel example (still seems to have minor issues
with IE9 and Jaws14, something I will discuss with them) checkout the
Access U page from Knowbility:
http://www.knowbility.org/v/john-slatin-accessu/

Cheers
-B