WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: How do users of physical Assistive Technologies access screen reader shortcuts

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Oct 7, 2016 7:56AM

>The mindset here is that screen readers only work with the TAB key.

I've run into crazy issues like this before as well.. For example, one large International organization decided in it's products to add the accessible name to input fields when the field received focus. So of course there was no accessible name in virtual cursor/browse mode and the timing was buggy when tabbing to the field and the name often wasn't announced. They also put everything in the focus order and argued that the app didn't need to allow the user access with virtual cursor/browse mode in order to be Section 508 compliant. Of course it also required the user turning off the virtual cursor with JAWS because in that mode title attributes are announced from other elements like divs, etc. There were also numerous other issues such as unlabeled graphics, etc. When I mentioned to the agency that they had purchased a non-section 508 compliant app I was asked to never say that again and to drop the issue.

Jonathan