WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Accessible Datepicker & NVDA Support

for

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: May 22, 2016 1:51PM

Thanks, that does help.

I see what you mean about the date format, though this is challenging because this is totally customizable in the setup, where a developer can literally do whatever they wish, such as "Saturday March 15, 2018", "2017-03-15", "03/15/2017", or anything else, and this can be tied to individual select elements for Month Day and Year, or to an edit field such as this. So writing an algorithm to predict anything a developer wants to do is impossible. That being said though, it is possible to manually set a date within the datepicker JavaScript object, so I can write instructions for doing this with a test page. Also putting a placeholder with the date string format would probably help, so I'll change this later this week.

Regarding the keystrokes, it is true there are a lot, yet this difficulty will be the same for all date pickers out there. I'll look into adding a help icon that can be used to pop these open, which should help.

I'll look into the other observations too, there is likely a way at present to control the datepicker from the edit field now, though I will need to build this from scratch. Even if I do this though, users still will not automatically know what all of the keystrokes are accept through trial and error, the same as all such datepickers out there.

FYI, you can scan through the years by holding down Alt+PageUp or Alt+PageDown.


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

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Chaals McCathie Nevile
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2016 1:43 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible Datepicker & NVDA Support

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%20Da
> te%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
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Chaals McCathie Nevile
> Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2016 3:41 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible Datepicker & NVDA Support
>
> On Thu, 19 May 2016 17:08:20 -0000, Meacham, Steve - FSA, Kansas City,
> MO < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> In my organization, I consider date pickers to be a "progressive
>> enhancement" and don't even assess them for accessibility, so long as
>> the user has the option to use them or ignore them and still specify
>> a date.
>
> For precisely the reasons Jonathan suggested, such as knowing what day
> of the week some date three months in the future will be, or more
> generally being able to annotate dates with more information, I
> suggest that it is very helpful to consider the accessibility of date pickers.
>
> I also recognise that they are a very common thing that it is very
> difficult to make very accessible.
>
> And since I am offline, I can't look at the specific example for
> another day or so, but I'd be interested to see.
>
> I'm really hoping that Web Components will help us fix the problem
> that input typeÚte failed to solve in HTML5. Figuring out what makes
> an accessible date picker, and finding a *really* good one, gives us
> insight into quite a lot of complex problems.
>
> Challenges for the truly geeky - but which become really important
> when talking about how to deal with dates.
>
> 1. I was at the world finals of ICPC, a programming competition, for
> the last week. There was a big poster outside with a mascot-type
> figure, and text that amounted, for me who doesn't read the local
> language's alphabet, to
>
> 17-20 *something* 2559
>
> What does it mean, and how is it relevant to the current discussion?
>
> 2. We have fairly reliable information - Shakespeare ;) - that Julius
> Caesar was killed on the Ides of March, in 44 BC.
>
> When was that exactly?
>
> 3. Why was the anniversary of the October Revolution celebreated in
> November?
>
> 4. When does the month of Ramadan start and end this year?
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
>> Behalf Of Jonathan Avila
>> Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 11:15 AM
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible Datepicker & NVDA Support
>>
>>> (Not sure why they exist). Just type MM/DD/YYY in the label.
>>
>> Date pickers are sometimes necessary because they can indicate dates
>> that are unavailable/available/holiday and they provide additional
>> information in tabular form such as the week a date falls on or for
>> example whether a date is the first, two, third, etc. Thursday in the
>> month.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> Jonathan Avila
>> Chief Accessibility Officer
>> SSB BART Group
>> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> 703.637.8957 (Office)
>> Visit us online: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Blog Check
>> out our Digital Accessibility Webinars!
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
>> Behalf Of Brandon Keith Biggs
>> Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 12:11 PM
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Accessible Datepicker & NVDA Support
>>
>> Hello,
>> NVDA users would be crazy if they used a date picker! (Not sure why
>> they exist). Just type MM/DD/YYY in the label. But that date picker
>> is fine on my end (although I would never use it because I have to go
>> through every day in every year!) Thanks,
>>
>>
>> Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>;
>>
>> On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Nisar A < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello experts,
>>>
>>> I built up a datepicker using bits and pieces from other datepickers.
>>> Is there a way I can verify if that datepicker is compliant with
>>> USDOT-508 / meets the WCAG 2.1.1 guidelines?
>>>
>>> Here is the working example for reference:
>>> https://jsfiddle.net/j49gz3g3/4/
>>>
>>> Some people in the testing team say that it is not compliant since
>>> NVDA screen reader reads out the date along with the column/row
>>> number. They claim it should read only the date and not extra
>>> information.
>>>
>>> Is that true?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Nisar
>>> >>> >>> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>>> >>>
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >>
>>
>>
>>
>> This electronic message contains information generated by the USDA
>> solely for the intended recipients. Any unauthorized interception of
>> this message or the use or disclosure of the information it contains
>> may violate the law and subject the violator to civil or criminal
>> penalties.
>> If you believe you have received this message in error, please notify
>> the sender and delete the email immediately.
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >
>
> --
> Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
> <EMAIL REMOVED> - - - Find more at http://yandex.com
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> --
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
<EMAIL REMOVED> - - - Find more at http://yandex.com