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Clarification on forms mode of screen readers

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From: Vemaarapu Venkatesh
Date: Jul 26, 2016 6:11AM


Hello all, Greetings

On the way to understand the interaction modes in JAWS, I got encountered
with few more uncertainities

From previous messages I got to know that screen readers will switch the
modes automatically and if that is the case no need to switch manually
which is happening perfectly.
Now as a screen reader user, when I am testing application using JAWS, it
starts guessing the things like the form lables and announce them even
though they are not associated. So, how the screen reader user will get to
know that the lable is programmatically labelled or not. Yes, if it is
labelled the label itself becomes clickable but how a screen reader user
will know as he can't click and JAWS even not announcing clickable when
focused to label text in virtual mode.

What I understood is if we turn off "virtual pc cursor" manually, JAWS is
rendering everything perfectly and I didn't find guessing behaviour in off
mode.
The same with "select country of residence" combobox example provided by me
in earlier messages.

My question is, whether I have to test all form elements by manually
turning off the virtual mode because I can't able to differentiate between
programmatically labelled elements and unlabelled elements in virtual mode.

But in NVDA I didn't find any such differences, form elements are similar
in both the modes. But I am finding difference in behaviour of JAWS not
only in form elements but also in few other contexts when I am manually
switching between virtual pc cursor on/ off.
Hope my concern is clear and clarify me about how to proceed my testing
with JAWS.

Regards,
venkatesh