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Re: JAWS and disabled combobox options

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From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Jan 11, 2017 11:33AM

Hi,
This does come up in large more complex select fields quite often, though not so much for the standard day to day usage.

Here is an example that demonstrates the scenario.

There is a select element that includes options for all of the counties in the United States, and at the start of each county list is an option element that includes the State name that this section belongs to. E.G California.

Since it's only valid to submit the field when a county is selected, but not when a State name is selected, some developers will disable the State name option element.

The result of this however is that it then makes it impossible to quickly jump to the beginning of these sections by pressing a letter such as "c" to jump to california, and it makes it impossible to even read the State name when arrowing up and down, making it impossible to determine which section you are even in.

It was this type of scenario that drove me to create the bookmarklet because dealing with this type of situation daily was driving me nuts.




Bryan Garaventa
Accessibility Fellow
SSB BART Group, Inc.
<EMAIL REMOVED>
415.624.2709 (o)
www.SSBBartGroup.com