WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Clarification on forms mode of screen readers

for

From: Léonie Watson
Date: Jul 26, 2016 8:07AM

On 26/07/2016 13:11, Vemaarapu Venkatesh wrote:
> 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.

When you test a website, you need to do two things:

1. Test the code to make sure it is correct.

In this case, make sure that a label has been provided for the form
field and that it is properly associated in the code.

2. Test to make sure it works with assistive technologies.

In this case, make sure that the correct label is announced by the
screen reader when focus moves to the form field.

>
> 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.

[...]

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.

No. When you test it is important that you use the screen reader in the
way that people actually do. Most Jaws users do not manually turn the
virtual cursor on/off.

>
> 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.

Jaws and NVDA do not behave the same all of the time. Jaws will also
behave differently depending whether you use it with IE or Firefox. They
both behave differently to VoiceOver on OSX/iOS.

This is why it's important to test both the code, and the experience of
using the site with an assistive technology.

Léonie.
--
@LeonieWatson tink.uk Carpe diem