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Re: Data table, forms vs content mode

for

From: escetic
Date: Oct 31, 2017 12:30PM

Léonie, thank you for confirming this seems to be an NVDA specific issue. I will raise a ticket with them and see what they say. Meanwhile, your train of thought led me to a bandaid solution of having hidden text asking the user to press escape to exit forms mode. It's ugly but I'd rather the user be able to navigate the table properly.

Birkir, this is a good question. I think the tabindex was legacy code, the table cells aren't intended to be interactive although there are links in some <th>'s and just outside the table which take the user to an overlay. Indeed, the tabindex may be interfering with the operation of the links, now that I think of it.

Kelly, yes, there is a product selection overlay with 4 slots, the user adds/removes products, then clicks "compare" which takes them to the underlying page with the comparison results table. We're using Javascript .focus to allow the user to easily switch between overlay and comparison table.

The nature of the table data is such that it's critical to be able to use arrows or a nonvisual user will seriously miss the comparison context, there is a lot of info and the table cells are even aligned with the product comparison overlay, so a nonvisual user needs to always know which product is in the scope of the column. Otherwise they're forced to memorize a huge amount of info which is not feasible.

Thank you for these questions and answers, this is extremely helpful.

Rob C


Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 30, 2017, at 9:09 PM, Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Why are all the elements in the table focusable?
> Does activating them with the keyboard (or clicking them with the
> mouse) do something?
>
>
>
>> On 10/30/17, KellyFord < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Can you expand on this paragraph:
>>
>> The link invokes the javascript getsElementByID and places focus accordingly
>> because we must move between this table and an overlay, which is removed
>> here for clarity.
>>
>> What do you mean by move between thee two items? Are you expecting that
>> focus moves outside the table to some overlay?
>>
>> Kelly
>>
>>
>>
>>