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RE: Do screen readers read hidden text?

for

From: Hoffman, David
Date: Jul 14, 2003 6:14AM

Hi Alastair,

The bottom line is that media="all" and media="screen" are not yet supported
so they are not current options. So the question becomes, what is the best
solution with the tools that are available now? The goals should be as
follows:

* Ensure that hidden text that is for programmatic purposes or that is
deactivated user content (and therefore is not intended for users) is not
spoken by JAWS, just as it is not displayed on the screen. This text is not
comments. And it is not intended for any users. The information may be
hidden in inline styles or style sheets.

* Provide a means of supplementing label text and link text with additional
information that does not display on the screen, but is read by the screen
reader. Incidentally, both of these things could be accomplished by using a
title attribute to supercede the label / link text.

Any ideas regarding how to accomplish this using currently supported
techniques?

Take care,
David