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Re: Quick JAWS Question

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Jul 8, 2013 5:57PM

This is normal behavior for Jaws.
If you think about it. If a user is going to interact with a form,
they have to turnforms mode on, in which case Jaws will read any
explicitly associated label. It will calculate name from the form
field title if nothing else is availible, and, unfortunately, is not
set to spaek both label and title (when different) by default.
In my experience, on IE10, sometimes Jaws does not even announce
"edit" for an input field when you down arrow into it, which is
strange, it just says nothing.
Jaws will read associated labels if you use tab, "e" for next edit
field or "f" for next form field, or if you pull up a list of all form
fields (JawsKey and F5).
Jaws will announce a password field, because "password" is a type of
input field.
Jaws also should announce attributes such as 2"required" even when you
arrow into the field.

For some reason, and this surprises me, Jaws does not automatically
read associated labels if auto forms mode is on and you arrow key into
the edit field, at least from my
quick test right now. In this scenario Jaws does not even announce the
attributes, such as "required" but, again, you can always use JawsKey
and arrow up to hear the label info for the currently active edit
field with forms mode (and laptop keyboard layout, I believe the
number 5 on the numpad of the desktop layout will give you same info,
but I have not used a desktop now for 5 years).
hth
-Birkir
Accessibility Subject Matter Expert | Deque Systems

On 7/8/13, David Ashleydale < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just have a quick JAWS question. I've been using JAWS for years, although
> I'm not really an expert at it. I'm using JAWS 14 on a Windows 7 machine.
> I'm looking at a web page in IE 10. It's a form.
>
> I'm noticing something that I've never noticed before, but maybe I've just
> missed it. When I use the Tab key to go from field to field, JAWS announces
> any text that has been explicitly labeled for each form field. Like this:
>
> Me: Tab key.
> JAWS: "First Name. Edit. Type in text."
> Me: Tab key.
> JAWS: "Last Name. Edit. Type in text."
>
> That's cool.
>
> But if I navigate using the up and down arrow keys, JAWS doesn't announce
> the field label when the field receives focus. Like this:
>
> Me: Down arrow.
> JAWS: "First Name."
> Me: Down arrow.
> JAWS: "blank."
> Me: Down arrow.
> JAWS: "Edit."
> Me: Down arrow.
> JAWS: "Last Name."
> Me: Down arrow.
> JAWS: "blank."
> Me: Down arrow.
> JAWS: "Edit."
>
> Before I continue investigating the code and everything, I just wanted to
> get a reality check. Is this expected JAWS behavior? I had thought that
> JAWS would announce the label again when I down arrowed into the field
> instead of just saying "Edit". Because if I couldn't see the page, for all
> I know the page author may have coded the labels after the fields. Are JAWS
> users expected to only use the Tab key when interacting with forms if they
> want to be sure which label is associated with which field?
>
> Thanks,
> David
> > > >