E-mail List Archives

Search E-mail List Archives for

Number of posts in this thread: 3 (In chronological order)

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Mon, Jun 13 2011 3:30PM
Subject: What do you think of the following table (is this acceptably accessible)?
No previous message | Next message →

Hi gang

I have been asked for an opinion on a search results table for the
Library for the Blind in Iceland.
Bare with me here, it is in Icelandic.
To look at this page go to
http://hbleit.bbi.is/
(leit is Icelandic for search".
There are two edit fields, use the first one "hljodbokaleit".
Type in, for instance, Jean into the search box and click "leita".
I know search results are in Icelandic, but there are two specific
concerns I have.
Firstly, there appears to be Javascript that is executed when
something is enterred into the edit field, Hal 11 rashes on this
occasionally, and you notice the "leita" button changes and some other
button called "sja allt" (or see all results" pops up. This confuses
Hal at least, and I believe I, as a lbind tester, do not see all info
there.
The second problem I have with this table is a little plus sign, which
Jaws called "expand". When you click on it information about the book
is displayed, I guess plot summary/publisher notes.
This is not working consistently for me with different screen readers,
and "expand" is a very vague description.
Has anyone seen or used a table like this, and what would be the
experience folks comment on its accessibility?
I have written up a set of comments, but if anyone has a few minutes
to give me input based on experience to improve my comments, I would
certainly appreciate it.
(not that I expect people to do my work for me, you understand, but
this seems a rather unique type of table and an example I am likely to
encounter again, so this might help others).
-B

From: Steve Green
Date: Mon, Jun 13 2011 4:18PM
Subject: Re: What do you think of the following table (is thisacceptably accessible)?
← Previous message | Next message →

I have run some tests using Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 and JAWS 9. This
is what I found:

1. I am not seeing anything change when you type in the edit field.

2. The Submit button has a 'value' attribute of Leita but the 'title'
attribute is 'Sjá allt'. For me, JAWS always reads 'Sjá allt' but it may
read Leita in other screen readers.

3. When you submit the form, an additional button is added to the page next
to the original button. The new button has a 'value' attribute of 'Sjá allt'
and a 'title' attribute of 'Sjá allar leitarniðurstöður'. This is
potentially confusing because the 'value' attribute of this button is the
same as the 'title' attribute of the other button.

4. The 'expand' functionality is working but JAWS starts to read in the
middle of the new content. If you don't go back to the 'expand' button
before starting to read, you will miss some of the content. This is not
uncommon with hide / reveal functionality.

I believe that it can be fixed if JavaScript is used to move the focus to
the 'expand' button after revealing the content. In my experience, newer
versions of JAWS are better at retaining the focus position than older
versions but it is still best to control it explicitly.

5. I have often seen this 'expand' functionality in nested lists, where it
is equally confusing. During user testing, screen reader users invariably
say that they understand what the 'expand' buttons do, but they don't know
where the expanded content ends. This makes it impossible for them to build
a mental model of the page.

They are typically reluctant to collapse the content, and it is not uncommon
for them to expand everything, after which they can navigate normally. Maybe
it would help if there was an 'expand all' button to make this process
easier.

I have not seen 'expand' functionality inside data tables before.

Steve Green
Test Partners Ltd

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Tue, Jun 14 2011 12:03AM
Subject: Re: What do you think of the following table (is this acceptably accessible)?
← Previous message | No next message

Birkir R. Gunnarsson wrote:

> I have been asked for an opinion on a search results table for the
> Library for the Blind in Iceland.
[...]
> http://hbleit.bbi.is/

I find the search page rather confusing

> (leit is Icelandic for search".

Yes, but search what? The text under it means "keyboard shortcuts". It
really took me some time that the text was meant to help in searches,
not to refer to the topic area. Besides, the search form seems to
duplicate the form that appears earlier on the page, in upper right corner.

> Firstly, there appears to be Javascript that is executed when
> something is enterred into the edit field,

There's a lot of JavaScript on the page. It would take some time to
study what really happens, but the effects are surely confusing. I see
the "Sjá allt" (See all) button in the search results and cannot
understand its meaning. Clicking on it seems to give me the same results.

> The second problem I have with this table is a little plus sign, which
> Jaws called "expand".

In the visual presentation, there are two kinds of plus signs: circled
pluses in the first column (with no column header), and green pluses in
the last column together with two other cryptic icons. The different
pluses have different effects, and this can be deduced from their
tooltip texts.

The first type of plus signs are images with alt text [Expand], so this
explains why Jaws calls them "expand". This is a rather typical example
of incomplete localization: textual content is in Icelandic, but alt
texts are in English. This could be an oversight, or it might be caused
by software limitations, or perhaps the person who wrote the alt texts
didn't quite understand the idea of alt texts. Probably an oversight, as
the green plus signs have their alt text in Icelandic.

> When you click on it information about the book
> is displayed, I guess plot summary/publisher notes.

Yes, and the information appears to be in a specific format.

> This is not working consistently for me with different screen readers,
> and "expand" is a very vague description.

It's vague, and it would be better to say something that corresponds to
"details about the book" or maybe just "details". It would be vague too,
but a text that gets repeated over and over again on a page should be
fairly short.

It would be more normal to make the title of the book a link, so that no
special icon would be needed. In this case, they apparently didn't want
to make it a link at all. When you click on the icon, the browser sends
a request to the server and gets the detailed information, then inserts
it into the page. This may sound efficient, as no full page is loaded
and no new window is opened, but it's no wonder that the operation may
confuse assistive software.

I haven't studied the code in detail, but typically in situations like
this, the browser dynamically inserts, via JavaScript code, new elements
into the document tree. Assistive software might get no notice of this,
i.e. it might not realize that a change has taken place.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/