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Re: training sr users for the modern web (wasIntuitiveness of JAWS jump to tabpanel shortcut for ARIA Tabs in FF??

for

From: Sailesh Panchang
Date: Jul 7, 2014 8:56AM

I believe the problem is introduction of new UI controls like tabs,
menus, slider control etc. that are implemented differently on
different websites / Web apps with varying levels of accessibility or
none at all.
The lack of uniform support for these using different combinations of
browsers and SRs (or assistive technologies in general) does not make
it easier for users.
For instance, tabs can be implemented simply by using HTML, JavaScript
and CSS in which a tab is a link also exposed as a tab.
Eg. http://www.health.govt.nz/yourhealth-topics/diseases-and-illnesses/heart-disease/angina
(Check out Summary, Symptoms, Treatment, etc.). This works and is
usable but strictly, every link is a tabstop ... not just the selected
tab.
And then one can use ARIA to markup tabs too. When done right only the
selected tab is a tabstop and one can arrow across. Here again
sometimes simply arrowing makes the current tab active and sometimes
one has to use the space / enterkey to make it active.
Well one can navigate by headings or images or pull up a list of links
but cannot do so for tabs or menus and the like.
There's no compulsion that tabs and menus should be within a
navigational landmark so their discovery is often a problem.
And when landmarks are used inconsistently or only the navigation and
contentinfo are marked up as landmarks for instance but not the main
or search regions, an SR user cannot simply rely on landmark
navigation to discover and navigate to content.
Regards,
Sailesh


On 7/7/14, Tim Harshbarger < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> What I find interesting about this situation is that typically if you ask
> someone using a screen reader to interact with a tab panel on a desktop
> application, they know what to do. But present the same UI on a web page and
> they seem to have difficulty figuring out how to interact with the tab
> panel.
>
> I definitely think part of that has to do with the non-existent to terrible
> keyboard interactions that are implemented on the web. I also agree that
> some of it has to do with the training. I think most of the time we still
> tend to present the web and desktop as 2 different things to the user when
> in reality we keep trying to make them more and more identical in reality.
>
>
>