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Re: JAWS adds tabindex=-1

for

From: Moore,Michael (DARS)
Date: May 1, 2015 10:36AM

JAWS does not change the code. There are options to filter duplicate links - thus is JAWS sees "Home" "Home" it will only announce the link once. You can also tell JAWS to skip repeated navigation - this will ignore a common nav bar at the top of the page. This one is a bit less reliable and some users will have a hard time finding search. All of this is totally under control of the user. There is a FLASH based screen reader detection script that I have seen used to trigger dynamic changes in the code - this is usually pretty dangerous and often causes more trouble than it solves especially since the detection does not work for all screen readers. A final option that I have seen (SharePoint and PeopleSoft) is a user selected flag that turns on "Accessibility" options. This also results in dynamic changes to the code. Best practice remains to make the code accessible from the beginning rather than bolt on accessibility later.

Mike Moore
Accessibility Coordinator,
Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services
(512) 424-4159 (Office)
(512) 574-0091 (Cell)