WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Footnotes

for

From: Isabel Holdsworth
Date: Aug 22, 2018 9:01AM

Hi all,

We're creating an exam test, one of whose questions has four multiple
choice options. Three of these options have associated footnotes
(sometimes more than one), and just to make things interesting,
footnote 1 relates to both options 1 and 3. So effectively there's a
many-to-many relationship.

We're struggling to mark up this question accessibly.

We've tried using the aria-described attribute, but it isn't spoken by
JAWS in expert mode so it's not reliable enough for us.

We've tried locating the text just below the option radiobuttons in
the DOM, but of course when JAWS is in forms mode, pressing Tab skips
over the footnotes and straight to the Submit button.

Can anyone think of an accessible way to associate each option with
its footnotes in a way that works for screenreader, screen mag and
keyboard users?

I'd really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks as always, Isabel