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Re: Actionable roles vs behaviors

for

From: Jennifer Sutton
Date: Jun 19, 2017 4:39PM

I'll toss out one idea folks may wish to consider when trying to decide
link or button.


I was vigorously informed that this was an "edge case" when I tried to
make this point on Twitter, so if you think it is, you're welcome to do
so. But I don't happen to, and I'd prefer to avoid another debate. Tia. :)


One circumstance where this can matter is when a screen reader user with
vision issues needs to talk about the UI with customer service, their
sighted colleague(s) in the work place, etc. It can be very confusing if
a sighted person is saying to activate the "blah" button, and I am
looking for that quickly with my button command, but it's not marked up
as such. Folks may dismiss this as a little thing, but when you're
trying to follow phone directions, or learn something for your job,
communication issues can really slow things down. Sure, I can do a
"search" on the screen to try to find the text for the link/button
label, but that doesn't always work (even if we might wish it would).


Whether or not this kind of thing is an "edge case" depends on your use
case(s)/user stories. Thanks for reading and considering.

My aim in responding is simply to note what I've experienced, as well as
what I've observed others experiencing.

I don't believe there is an easy solution.

But I do believe that folks who do functional testing with real users of
screen readers and text input may be gathering some very interesting
information about this topic.



Best,

Jennifer