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Re: Accessible Datepicker & NVDA Support

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From: Chaals McCathie Nevile
Date: May 22, 2016 2:43AM

Hi Bryan,

On Sat, 21 May 2016 08:52:36 -0000, Bryan Garaventa
< <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi Chaals,
>
> " Figuring out what makes an accessible date picker, and finding a
> *really* good one, gives us insight into quite a lot of complex
> problems."
>
> Please test the following when you have a chance, it would be good to
> get your opinion on this one.
> http://whatsock.com/tsg/Coding%20Arena/ARIA%20Date%20Pickers/ARIA%20Date%20Picker%20(Basic)/demo.htm

There's a lot to like, obviously. But some things are still really quite
hard.

As an example, I tried to select my birthday - if you want to send me a
card, please ask…. It seemed likely that I could put in a date, by hand,
and although there was no clue about the format I had hoped I would get
something in the right year when I popped up the date picker widget.
Instead it takes dozens of keystrokes, most with a 3-finger combination,
and I have to know the keyboard shortcut - which is unannounced except in
this example page.

The way I first tried to do it, tabbing around and hitting return on the
arrow that shifts years, which is easier than the dance for me to
genereate modified pageDn, shifted my focus from the button I was on -
previous year - back to the date. So that path was going to be hundreds of
keystrokes.

I tried it because I couldn't remember if the shortcut you had for
skipping years was one that already did something else in my normal set up.

Some things that could be improved.

1. Look at the value when you open the picker and see if you can parse it
2. Don't jump focus when the picker is open
3. Use a focusable dropdown that recognises typing for the year, so if I
start typing 156 it offers me the decade of the 1560s to select from.
4. Ditto for month, I guess.

I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts about this. It's really not a
simple topic about a couple of bugs in a piece of code. There are some
really hard issues in here.

cheers

> Best wishes,
> Bryan
>
>
> Bryan Garaventa
> Accessibility Fellow
> SSB BART Group, Inc.
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 415.624.2709 (o)
> www.SSBBartGroup.com
>
>