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Re: JAWS and online forms question

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Feb 24, 2003 6:51AM

Lisa,
In that case, you might want to consider using the title attribute on the
<input> tags to provide clear labels for the fields.

Some fields (name, email address, organization, please type your message
here) can easily use the text available in a <label> tag.

Other fields, such as "relationship" need more information and this could be
provided in the title -- <input title="relationship to organization">.
Similarly, "purpose for message", "topic of message", "message subject"
could be used for other fields. (why not use the topic and purpose as the
message subject?)

The field that I have the most difficulty with is "capacity". I can't
figure out how it is different from relationship. In any case, the label
"capacity" seems insufficient. Maybe the label should be "In what capacity
are you writing?" or "Who I am".

AWK

On 2/24/03 8:16 AM, "Miller, Lisa F. (LMS)" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Andrew,
>
> The link you included is very similar to the page we are building:
> http://www.ma.doe.gov/energy/web.html. We are reproducing an official
> government form on the web, and must retain all the information available on
> the original form, so we do not have the option to condense any of the text
> - it is required to look as much like the paper form as possible. The site
> is required to be 508 compliant, which has been defined by the client as
> being JAWS complient.
>
> We would like to make the site as 'usable' as possible, but finding 508
> compliant examples which do more than a 'Contact Me' page has been
> difficult. If anyone could point me to any good sites, especially in
> regards to complex forms, it would be most appreciated. I have passed the
> suggestions from this forum on to the programmer, and hope to get some
> feedback from him today or tomorrow.
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Lisa
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Andrew Kirkpatrick [SMTP: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
>> Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 9:53 PM
>> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Subject: Re: JAWS and online forms question
>>
>> Lisa,
>> This is a good example of a usability problem for people using assistive
>> technology. The information is
>> accessible - the user could get it if he knew it was there, but your
>> testing is indicating that a problem exists
>> and that is worth listening to.
>>
>> You could either take the suggestion to use fieldset and legend, or you
>> could indicate somehow that
>> additional information for a particular input is available in the label.
>> If you indicated at the top of the form at
>> an asterisk in the label indicates additional information about the input
>> is available just above the input, it
>> might work for some users, but you'll probably get lots of junky data from
>> people who don't understand what
>> is going on or use the additioanl info.
>>
>> If you are talking about a form like the one at:
>> http://www.ma.doe.gov/energy/web.html
>> (which seems to fit your description), I don't think that the extra text
>> would be necessary if the labels on the
>> inputs were more descriptive. I don't believe that I could complete this
>> form successfully - there is extra
>> text, but I don't get what I'm supposed to enter into the form.
>>
>> If you send the list a link to a sample page, I'm sure you'd get lots of
>> advice.
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>> 2/20/2003 4:34:51 PM, "Miller, Lisa F. (LMS)" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> wrote:
>>
>>> We are developing an online form, and are having problems navigating thru
>>> the from with JAWS. There are a number of labeled input fields, which
>> each
>>> have text instructions preceeding them, such as:
>>>
>>> ==>>> This is a long instruction on how to correctly fill out field 1, plus any
>>> reference information which might be needed.
>>>
>>> Field1 Label: ___________
>>>
>>> This is a long instruction on how to correctly fill out field 2, plus any
>>> reference information which might be needed.
>>>
>>> Field2 Label: ____________
>>>
>>> ==>>>
>>> When our tester navigates this page with JAWS, the instructions lines are
>>> skipped because it is navigating thru the input fields only - to get the
>>> text, he has to change modes, which a blind person would not know to do -
>>> there is no indication to the user that the text is there.
>>>
>>> Right now the page is built with one set of FORM tags - is there any way,
>>> other than wrapping each individual input field with its own FORM tag, to
>>> get JAWS to read the instruction text? We are debating placing the text
>>> into read only textareas, but this would not be our first choice. Has
>>> anyone else ran across this - maybe already solved this for us?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Lisa F. Miller
>>> BWXT Y-12 - Technical Computing
>>> Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----
>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
>>> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>>>
>>>
>> Andrew
>>
>> --
>> Andrew Kirkpatrick
>> CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
>> 125 Western Ave.
>> Boston, MA 02134
>> E-mail: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Web site: ncam.wgbh.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
>> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>
>
> ----
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>

--
Andrew Kirkpatrick
CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media
125 Western Ave.
Boston, MA 02134
E-mail: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Web site: ncam.wgbh.org

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