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RE: Do screen readers read hidden text?

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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

-----Original Message-----
From: Alastair Campbell [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 11:33 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: RE: Do screen readers read hidden text?


Hi David,

Thanks for taking the time to correspond on this. I think I need to clarify
some of the techniques and scenarios I referred to. I'm speaking here mainly
from the point of view of a front-end developer.

> Exactly how do you use hidden text now?

The most common usage is to hide skip links. As pointed out earlier, they
should probably be provided visually, but I tend to use CSS based layouts
with the content at the top of the HTML page. I'm not sure who would benefit
from visual skip links in this case, since when tabbing through links most
browsers follow the code rather than layout.

Sometimes, I also like to provide some contextual information for
non-graphical browsers. For example, if a page has several sections and lots
of links, I would have (hidden) headings such as "Navigation" or "Upcoming
events". These help provide the context that a visual browser shows with
layout.

> From what I can tell, the media attribute of CSS2 will be a preferred
> technique once it is fully supported by browsers

Your absolutely right to point out browser support, which is required before
screen reader support, and thanks for those links :)
Aural support isn't there at all yet.

What I'm suggesting *might* be possible already (it needs checking) - the
difference between media="all" (the default) and media="screen". Most style
sheets don't have a media attribute set, so wouldn't be affected. Those
wanting to hide things from visual browsers but not screen readers, could do
so in a screen style sheet.

The table from the Codestyle site shows that the common browsers used by
people with screen readers (Internet Explorer 5+) do support the screen
style sheet. What I'm not sure of, is whether Jaws can tell the difference
(through IE) between all and screen.

> Hidden text is actually common in web applications or dynamic
> web sites.
Aren't these usually hidden in comments or something, rather than with style
sheets?

> It can also be used to hide information that is required
> for programmatic purposes but is not intended for any users
Are these hidden with styles? Hidden inputs for forms are hidden by the
HTML, but I would be out of my depth in commenting on large-scale back end
processes! What are the methods used to hide this type of information?

Currently, screen readers (well, Jaws at least) will hide things that are
hidden by most techniques. Inline styles (in the HTML) and linked style
sheets. It is only things hidden by a class from an imported style sheet
that are not hidden to Jaws users.

I would suggest that this is either maintained, or slightly altered by
recognising imported styles, but not style sheets with a media of screen.
For the vast majority of sites, people would not notice the difference
because they don't provide hidden links, and don't tend to use imported
styles.

However, for those people who do try and make life easier for users of text
browsers & screen readers, it would be an easy method.

Depending on how it is implemented, the hidden label text could be useful,
but I'd would still like a more general method.

All the best,

-Alastair


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