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Re: Carousel next and previous buttons

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From: escetic
Date: Dec 21, 2017 12:12PM

Hi Brian,

You raise a good point but there are some considerations giving me pause.

First, when a user clicks a button I assume they want something to happen, rather than nothing, that we all want some kind of immediate feedback that activating the button has worked as intended. Secondly, I would would want to hear which slide I'm on, at least, and presumably also the heading or title of the slide (otherwise I'd have to memorize which slide is which). I also think on first encountering the carousel, assuming I don't want to skip it altogether, I may want to advance through all slides first, listening to their content, before I get to a point where I know I want to advance from the current slide to slide 6.

If prev/next buttons are also supplemented with arrow key functionality then these could work as an easy method to get from the current slide to slide 6, advancing the slides but bypassing all content but slide number and heading? Meanwhile, prev/next buttons could assume the user wants to hear each slide content?

What do you think?

Rob C


> On Dec 20, 2017, at 8:50 AM, Lovely, Brian via WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
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> I tend toward an "inform and empower" policy when it comes to coding with screen readers in mind. I don't suppose any of us think that a screen reader user wants an entire page read out; that's just too much information to absorb, and the user doesn't have the ability to decide what gets read out and when. While this is an extreme example, I think it can inform our decisions on a smaller scale.
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> I wouldn't read anything automatically, nor would I recommend shifting focus from the slide controls. A carousel, for better or worse, is a common feature that users recognize. A screen reader user who encounters a "previous" or "previous slide" button is likely to examine the surrounding elements and will then discover that they have encountered a carousel. It's the user's decision to consume the slide contents or not. As to shifting focus off the button when it is activated, what if a user wants to advance the carousel by more than one slide? Imagine how irritating it would be to activate the "next" button, have to navigate back to it, activate it again, and so on.
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