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Re: Button button, who's got the button

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From: Yamanishi, Evan
Date: Mar 23, 2015 6:15PM

There are a few options for this. I put them in a codepen: http://codepen.io/sh0ji/pen/pvGgRW.

I personally prefer using a span element with the screen reader only CSS class inside of a button element (the first example), and rarely advocate using an image if it can be avoided. While I don't think it makes a difference for something as simple as "help," the alt attribute can't be navigated with a screen reader the same way normal text can. You also have to remember to assign the parent anchor a role="button", which people tend to forget or overlook. That said, if an image is acting as a link and not a button, that's the way to do it.

Using aria-label works just fine as well, but I try not to use ARIA if there are HTML/CSS solutions available.

Evan

From: WebAIM-Forum [ <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Lynn Holdsworth [ <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2015 7:05 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Button button, who's got the button

Hi Jeff,

You could use an image button whose alt attribute contains the value you want screenreaders to announce. Renditions of the site in other languages would need this value to change to reflect the chosen language.

More info at:
http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/#buttons

Best, Lynn



> On 23 Mar 2015, at 22:16, Bishop, Jeff - (jeffbis) < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
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> Hello Everyone,
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> We have a site here at the University that uses buttons similar to the following:
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> <button name="help">?</button>
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> You probably are seeing where this is going already. They want to keep the visual aspect of the question marks in play for the site's buttons but we are hoping we can get a consistent screen reader experience with IE, Firefox (with JAWS/Window-Eyes/NVDA) and Safari (VoiceOver).
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> So far my testing shows that aria-label will work with JAWS 16 (the screen used by 95 percent of students on campus) inside of Firefox.
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> It only works if you tab to the button in IE with JAWS 16. If you move to the item using the virtual cursor then it only shows the question mark.
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> So, before I continue testing I was wondering what people have found best to accommodate all users in this instance?
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> I know the simple answer is to change the text inside of the button tag <smile>.
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> Any hints are hugely appreciated.
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> Jeff
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