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From: smithj7
Date: Oct 7, 2006 12:10PM

I'm a humble web person who works for division in a large agency (Blind Services, DOE) that SHOULD have the answers on accessiblity. I'm way below the learning curve. But we (myself the alledge coding expert, and MIS manager who is a programmer as well as a Jaws user whom Freedom Scientific periodically attempts to take from our agency) are working with a great group of folks making a web application using visual basic. They are trying to do it right the first time. One of the main issue is how to handle forms validation. They wanted to use AJAX cause of problems with the ASP validation and am going to recommended strongly Ajax is not the way to go. But I will need to explain why. (next email is about alternatives) I understand the javascript issue, the browers issues with XMLHttpRequest object (or similar), but even after reading w3 on what is DOM I don't know how to explain the DOM issue. In one of the articles it says: There doesn't appear to be any reliable way to no
tify screen readers of an update in the DOM.

>From my understanding screen readers can read DOM, if I understand what DOM is. I am writing up my negative recommendation on using AJAX with referrals to other sites including the ones listed below. But I don't have a grasp of the why. I saw it not work, user I highly compent JAWS user, so I know it didn't read update info.

Articles read and will recommend.

http://webaim.org/techniques/ajax/ (and links)
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-screenreaders-work
http://www.standards-schmandards.com/index.php?2005/03/01/16-ajax-and-accessibility

Any info on the why will help me help people that want to make their application accessible. Note: Please don't be shy if you think Ajax is not problemetic to accessiblity. I have mainly made this determination by reading articles on the net. I feel there are better alternatives.