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RE: Screen reader output for disabled form element?

for

From: Moore, Michael
Date: Aug 11, 2006 3:50PM

Shawn,

A quick experiment with JAWS 6.1 revealed that the form fields will be
spoken. JAWS will report the type of input and that it is unavailable.

Test Code Below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Disabled Form Field Test</title>
<meta name="generator" content="CSE HTML Validator Professional
(http://www.htmlvalidator.com/)" />
</head>

<body>
<h1>Disabled Form Test</h1>
<form action="" method="post">
<label for="i1">Text Input Test</label><br />
<input type="text" name="i1" id="i1" length="10" maxlength="255"
disabled="disabled" /><br />
<input type="radio" name="i2" id="i2" disabled="disabled" />
<label for="i2">Radio Button Test One</label><br />
<input type="radio" name="i2" id="i3" disabled="disabled" />
<label for="i3">Radio Button Test Two</label><br />
<input type="checkbox" name="i4" id="i4" disabled="disabled" />
<label for="i4">Checkbox Test</label><br />
<label for="i5">Select Test</label>
<select name="select" id="i5" size="1" disabled="disabled">
<option value="1">Option 1</option>
<option value="2">Option 2</option>
<option value="3">Option 2</option>
</select><br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit"
disabled="disabled">
</form>
<form action="" method="post">
<label for="i6">Text Input Test</label><br />
<input type="text" name="i6" id="i6" length="10" maxlength="255"
/><br />
<input type="radio" name="i7" id="i7" />
<label for="i7">Radio Button Test One</label><br />
<input type="radio" name="i7" id="i8" />
<label for="i8">Radio Button Test Two</label><br />
<input type="checkbox" name="i9" id="i9" />
<label for="i9">Checkbox Test</label><br />
<label for="i10">Select Test</label>
<select name="select" id="i10" size="1" >
<option value="1">Option 1</option>
<option value="2">Option 2</option>
<option value="3">Option 2</option>
</select><br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="submit" >
</form>
</body>
</html>

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Shawn Lawler
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 2:54 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Screen reader output for disabled form element?

Here's the situation-
We're putting a poll on our homepage which requires that you log in to
answer the poll.
We'd like the poll question and options to be viewable (but not
submittable) when a user is not logged in.

So the question becomes, do we still use a form for the not-logged-in
version? or perhaps a list instead?

The main goal is to give visual users the look of a form(radio buttons,
etc)(disabled - so greyed out and whatnot) and give screen readers the
'feel' of a form - so that both groups grasp that the form is there for
the using once they log in (we'll also have text which says as much
above the form).

We're aware that disabled form elements are not read by most(all?)
screen readers when in forms mode.

I'd like to know what exactly a screen reader outputs when encountering
a disabled form element while not in forms mode (such as does it
actually read out 'disabled' and then read the label).

Thanks much - hope this is clear.
Shawn

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