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Thread: screen readers: forcing focus on forms
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Angela French
Date: Tue, May 07 2013 2:45PM
Subject: screen readers: forcing focus on forms
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It has been our practice in our development shop to force focus into the first form element on a page with a form. This is meant to assist the quick filling in of the form. In my testing with NVDA (all I have), this appears to be problematic for screen reader users in that any instructions or information on the page that appear above the form is bypassed. Is the way that I perceived this, with my inexperienced usage of a screen reader, typical of the way most screen readers users would encounter such a page?
Thank you!
Angela French
Internet Specialist
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
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http://www.checkoutacollege.com/
From: Len Burns
Date: Tue, May 07 2013 2:55PM
Subject: Re: screen readers: forcing focus on forms
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Angela,
In my experience as a screen reader user, this is less than convenient. As
you I am certain surmise, I must then move out of the form to learn the
instructions for completing it.
Regards,
-Len
From: Roger Hudson
Date: Tue, May 07 2013 2:56PM
Subject: Re: screen readers: forcing focus on forms
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Hi Angela,
I think the short answer is yes. In my experience when testing situations
like this with screen reader users, many will arrow back up the page to find
out what is required.
Depending on the type of form control and the amount of
information/instructions required to fill it in, you could consider using
aria-describedby to associate the instructions with the first input.
Aria-describedby is pretty well supported by screen readers.
Roger
From: Angela French
Date: Tue, May 07 2013 3:21PM
Subject: Re: screen readers: forcing focus on forms
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Other than possibly failing "perceivable", does anyone else know of a WCAG2.0 guideline that this may be in conflict with?
>
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Tue, May 07 2013 3:46PM
Subject: Re: screen readers: forcing focus on forms
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Hi
If there is an error detected in a form submition, I generally find
(as a screen reader user) that it does help to put the ocus inside the
problematic field when possible.
Screen reader users can jump to the first form element with the "e"
key, in most screen readers, all of them, as far as I konw, have
convenient navigation mechanisms to jump directly to edit fields.
Screen reader users rely most of all on consistency and
predictability, and it could be argued that moving the focus like this
may conflict with "change of content" WCAG, though not likely.
I think it is better to just leave the focus either at the top of the
page, or on an element at the beginning of a form, like the form
landmark div or similar.
On 5/7/13, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Other than possibly failing "perceivable", does anyone else know of a
> WCAG2.0 guideline that this may be in conflict with?
>
>>