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Re: Screen Readers as a Development Tool for Web Developers

for

From: Sean Curtis
Date: Jul 27, 2015 8:09PM

As a developer doing quite a lot of cross browser and cross AT testing of
web components, it was quite frustrating to find that the trial version of
JAWS does not allow you to test web pages (
http://webaim.org/blog/jaws-license-not-developer-friendly/). I wish I'd
read that before wasting an hour trying to work out what I'd done wrong
when setting it up and nothing was getting announced.

I'm also lucky enough to work at a company that can afford $1000+ for a
license so we can test our software. I did contact FS in regards to this,
but they do not hand out free licenses to developers. I'm just thankful
that most of our devs use OSX, so VoiceOver is readily available for them
to do some basic Accessibility Testing of components before pushing their
commits.

--
Sean Curtis

On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 1:10 AM, Leitschuh, Jonathan <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> The primary reason that this was done (I think) is because it is much
> easier to style div elements. Default HTML tables don't easily support
> many of the features that many people want.
> I wasn't there for the beginning of the development of this product.
> UI-Grid just had many of the features that we needed but we also needed it
> to be accessible. Accessibility in this case was something that was
> thought up later rather than something that was thought of from day one.
>
> One of the major reasons why a grid like this was created is because most
> of the data can be virtualized when not within the scroll window. That way
> if your dataset is 100k rows the browser is only showing 12. It make the
> entire user experience much more responsive.
>
> -Jonathan
>
>
> On 7/23/15, 10:48 AM, "Graham Armfield" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
> >_mallory is right in my view, that is a significant reason why devs would
> >want to do this. I've seen it in websites for mobiles, and in hybrid apps
> >too. Left and right scrolling of tables may deliver an accessible
> >experience, but many people don't like the way it looks.
> >
> >
> >Regards
> >Graham Armfield
> >
> >
> >
> >coolfields.co.uk <http://www.coolfields.co.uk/>;
> >M:07905 590026
> >T: 01483 856613
> >@coolfields <https://twitter.com/coolfields>
> >
> >On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 3:37 PM, _mallory < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> >wrote:
> >
> >> While I'm unsure of which circumstances Jonathan's talking about, I
> >> have seen developers avoid using tables for tables purely because of
> >> mobile-suckage (that the best one can do with large tables is scroll
> >> them).
> >>
> >> _mallory
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 12:46:33PM +0000, Moore,Michael (HHSC) wrote:
> >> > Wouldn't you consider it to be a fundamental semantic flaw to
> >>implement
> >> a grid with divs rather than a table or am I missing something. I see
> >>this
> >> implementation all of the time. I understand using generic markup
> >>(spans
> >> and divs) to create constructs that do not map well to existing html
> >> elements but for a grid a table provides the proper semantic structure.
> >>-
> >> Unless you are referring to a layout grid used to organize sections of a
> >> page. Perhaps the problem is that developers are using the frameworks
> >> layout grid construct where they should be dropping a table into a div
> >> within the grid.
> >> >
> >> > Mike Moore
> >> > Accessibility Coordinator
> >> > Texas Health and Human Services Commission
> >> > Civil Rights Office
> >> > (512) 438-3431 (Office)
> >> > (512) 574-0091 (Cell)
> >> >
> >> >