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Re: Interdependent select boxes and text box

for

From: Andrew Johns
Date: Aug 25, 2014 2:12PM

Hi Birkir,

Thanks for the reply - this has been a great help, and will take the
trigger/focus issues on board when developing the system.

Kind regards,

Andrew


On 25 August 2014 13:41, Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Andrew
>
> Your approach sounds fine from an accessibility perspective, as long
> as the content that changes comes (in content order) after the
> trigger.
> Having a select box that changes content that comes before it would
> definitely be confusing to users, particularly screen reader users who
> do not have an overview of the page, and would violate WCAG "change of
> context" success criterion.
>
> - Make sure that the content update is triggerred when user either
> selects or (better yet) tabs out of the dropdown menu (without page
> reload). Content update must respond to keyboard selection as well as
> with the mouse obviously.
> - Make sure the content that is updated comes, in content order, after
> the dropdown that triggers the update. To avoid any confusion the
> updated content should come inline to the dropdown (i.e. the first tab
> press takes user into the updated content).
> - Make sure that the user can reverse his actions (shift-tab from
> content into dropdown) and select a different option.
> Also make sure that focus does not jump automatically once user
> selects something in the dropdown.
> I have seen examples where, if a user select "other", the focus jumps
> automatically to a text box, and from there user has difficulty
> getting back to the dropdown using shift-tab. Wat should happen is
> that user selects "other" and then the next tab press takes user to
> the edit field.
> Cheers
> -B
>
>
>
> On 8/22/14, Andrew Johns < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Could someone confirm whether interdependent select boxes and text boxes
> > are likely to cause many problems with accessibility these days?
> >
> > Essentially I want to re-create the 2001 UK census groupings. The first
> > dropdown would contain 5 ethnicity groups, which are then broken down
> into
> > a subset of ethnic groups in a second dropdown, populated by the choice
> > made in the first box.
> >
> > In the event that they then select "other" in the second dropdown, a
> > textbox would then be displayed, allowing them to enter the value of
> their
> > choice.
> >
> > I saw an example (here:
> > http://www.onlinetools.org/articles/accessibleinter/)
> > which shows how you might change the approach and use radio buttons for
> the
> > first set instead, but I thought I'd check what current practices are.
> >
> > I did think about reloading the page after selection, but that feels
> > clunky. Also, given the reasonably low number of options available, I
> did
> > consider optgroups in one single select box, but the number of "Others"
> in
> > it (one per optgroup) might make it more confusing anyway.
> >
> > Anything else I should consider before doing this? Is AJAX/Javascript
> > generally accessible providing certain things are taken into
> consideration?
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Andrew
> > > > > > > >
>
>
> --
> Work hard. Have fun. Make history.
> > > >



--
Andrew
http://andrewjohns.net