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Re: JAWS and disabled combobox options

for

From: JP Jamous
Date: Jan 12, 2017 7:09AM

Thank you Bryan. That makes more sense to me now.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Bryan Garaventa
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2017 12:06 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] JAWS and disabled combobox options

No problem, happy to help. :) One note for others, the bookmarklet was simply a personal utility I created to work around some accessibility issues I was encountering, but this should not ever be part of any development strategy for making something like this accessible.

To answer a prior question from JP Jamous, the scenario described has only one select element.

E.G Example syntax:

<select title="Choose a County" >
<option >Arizona</option>
<optgroup>
<option> County Name One </option>
<option> County Name Two </option>
</optgroup>
<option >California</option>
<optgroup>
<option> County Name One </option>
<option> County Name Two </option>
</optgroup>
</select>

You can quickly jump to California by typing "cal".

However if you try the following instead, this is impossible.


<select title="Choose a County" >
<option disabled >Arizona</option>
<optgroup>
<option> County Name One </option>
<option> County Name Two </option>
</optgroup>
<option disabled >California</option>
<optgroup>
<option> County Name One </option>
<option> County Name Two </option>
</optgroup>
</select>

This is why this practice should never be done.

Instead, client side scripting should be used to check the value of such options and prevent submission if the intended value is not selected.



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

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Paul Collins
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 8:08 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] JAWS and disabled combobox options

Hi everyone, thanks for your replies, I really appreciate your input.

Bryan, your bookmarklet is a great idea, I've saved it. The decision to disable options in a select box was not mine, it was handed to me - I'm working on a large scale enterprise app and as you can imagine, in these situations accessibility is often a series of compromises between UX, Design, Product Owners, Developers, etc to work out the best solution.

However, based on everyone's feedback, I've managed to come up with a better solution that seems to satisfy all the stakeholders involved :)

The drop down contained a list of accounts. Some were disabled occasionally, but we wanted to communicate which ones. I've now removed all disabled accounts from the drop down and listed them in a descriptive warning message, associated with the selectbox using aria-describedby.

Hope that makes sense. Thanks for your input everyone, it made me rethink the design and come up with a better solution.

All the best,
Paul


On 12 January 2017 at 05:55, JP Jamous < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Bryan,
> Do you have a page that I can check out? I am not following you,
> because from your description it sounded like both the States and
> Counties are loading in the same dropdown box, which cannot be correct.
>
> I know I am losing you somewhere. I do understand though that when one
> country is selected the state item should become disabled.
>
> Are the counties in a different dropdown or are they check boxes or
> radio buttons? Just trying to map out the layout in my head.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Bryan Garaventa
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 12:33 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] JAWS and disabled combobox options
>
> 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
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of JP Jamous
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 8:52 AM
> To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] JAWS and disabled combobox options
>
> I am following this post and thinking of it as I don't have the time
> to test it. I want to fall back to Windows Development for a second to
> address it.
>
> When a list view or combo box loaded data from a DB, programmers and I
> always repopulated the items from the DB or an array in the RAM. The
> question becomes, why do you want to disable a dropdown item if there
> is no way to interact with it? Simply remove it by using style="display: none;"
> Problem solved.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Jonathan Avila
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 10:24 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] JAWS and disabled combobox options
>
> > Just wondering if anyone has tackled this and how they managed to
> communicate to the screen reader user that the option is there and disabled?
>
> The support of aria-disabled doesn't seem to work correctly in my
> tests with IE and JAWS. But it does seem to be communicated in
> Firefox. You would then need to communicate somehow visually that the
> option was disabled as well -- perhaps with some styling?
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Avila
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART Group
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 703.637.8957 (Office)
> Vis Visit us online: Website | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Blog
> See you at CSUN in March!
>
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>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Paul Collins
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 1:04 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: [WebAIM] JAWS and disabled combobox options
>
> Hi friends.
>
> I'm currently working on a project where individual options in a
> select box are disabled, using the *disabled* attribute:
>
> *<select>*
> * <option>option 1</option>*
> * <option disabled>option 2</option>*
> *</select>*
>
> When using the keyboard arrow keys, it skips over each disabled option.
> This also means *JAWS* doesn't read out the disabled option either.
>
> Just wondering if anyone has tackled this and how they managed to
> communicate to the screen reader user that the option is there and disabled?
>
> Thanks for any help.
> Paul
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