WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: on mouse over

for

From: Dawn Budge
Date: Mar 20, 2013 6:37AM

The best option is usually to make the functionality work with the focus
event as well as the mouseover event and ensure that your element is
focussable. Elements that focus as standard are <a>, <input>, <textarea>,
otherwise you must apply tabindex=0 or tabindex=-1 to allow the element to
receive focus. The focus event will fire when the user tabs onto the
element, the focus method is called in JavaScript, and when a mouse user
clicks the element.

Hope that helps,
Dawn

----------------------------------------
From: "Steve Green" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 12:05 PM
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] on mouse over

If JAWS says "onMouseover", it means that the link has a JavaScript
onMouseover event handler, which means that an event is triggered when the
mouse is hovered over the link. Sometimes that hover event is the only
thing that happens, such as a CSS Help overlay being displayed. Sometimes
the hover event is in addition to the link being clickable. In the latter
case the onMouseover event might just be a change in the colour of the link
but it could also trigger a dropdown menu or something else.

As such, there is no one 'right' way to code onMouseover links. They are
actually an old way of implementing this functionality and there are better
methods that use DOM scripting.

Are you aware that JAWS can trigger onMouseover events by using Ctrl +
Insert + Enter? The behaviour depends on the JAWS version and has changed
quite a lot over the years. It does not always work but it does most of the
time. However, it may be difficult for you to work out what has happened if
the change is purely visual, such as a dropdown menu opening.

I have recently seen a couple of websites where it was necessary to press
Ctrl + Insert + Enter to trigger the onMouseover event and then press the
Enter key to trigger the link. However, I only found that out by
experimentation and will not always work.

Steve Green