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Thread: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
Number of posts in this thread: 7 (In chronological order)
From: Christopher Koeber
Date: Thu, Jul 02 2015 2:32PM
Subject: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
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Hello,
I am attempting to develop Section 508 compliant web pages for JAWS 11 and
Internet Explorer 8 (has to be those versions of said applications per
client requirements) and one of the major problems I am having is that I
cannot consistently get screen reader output from JAWS.
With Internet Explorer 10-11+ the various ARIA+ labels are supported along
with reading of DIV tags specially hidden by CSS, thus developing for JAWS
is much easier.
But with Internet Explorer 8 the same set of items are not read at all.
In addition, it seems JAWS (11 at least) will stop reading the page even if
there is one or two HTML markup errors.
So I have two (2) questions:
-
Has anyone found a consistent way to develop for all browsers
(especially older ones) as well as newer ones?
-
Is there a rock-solid no-nonsense table of what JAWS actually reads (in
terms of "title" versus "aria-label", etc.)? What I am looking for is one
label/text setting I can set that JAWS will read without fail on a tag,
other tags seem to be very unreliable.
I hope this find folks well.
Regards,
Christopher Kurtis Koeber
E: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
P: (301) 467-8417
From: Léonie Watson
Date: Thu, Jul 02 2015 3:36PM
Subject: Re: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
← Previous message | Next message →
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> On Behalf Of Christopher Koeber
> Sent: 02 July 2015 21:33
[...]
> With Internet Explorer 10-11+ the various ARIA+ labels are supported along
> with reading of DIV tags specially hidden by CSS, thus developing for JAWS is
> much easier.
>
> But with Internet Explorer 8 the same set of items are not read at all.
>
This is because IE8 has little or no support for ARIA. Consequently, the versions of Jaws that were contemporary to IE8 had no ARIA support to speak of.
It is also worth noting that FS withdrew support for IE (along with Windows XP) last year. If you're using Jaws 16, it's possible that IE8 support has deteriorated with that version of Jaws.
>
> In addition, it seems JAWS (11 at least) will stop reading the page even if
> there is one or two HTML markup errors.
I haven't come across this behaviour in Jaws. Can you point to an example where this problem occurs? Can you also explain what you mean by "stops reading"?
[...]
>
> Has anyone found a consistent way to develop for all browsers
> (especially older ones) as well as newer ones?
Use code that is supported in all versions, or use code that degrades gracefully in older browsers. Jaws does its own thing with IE to some extent, but much of what a screen reader supports is based on what the browser supports.
>
> Is there a rock-solid no-nonsense table of what JAWS actually reads (in
> terms of "title" versus "aria-label", etc.)? What I am looking for is one
> label/text setting I can set that JAWS will read without fail on a tag,
> other tags seem to be very unreliable.
Which element are you trying to use? The answer will vary depending on the element in question.
For example, Jaws does not announce the title attribute on anything but form fields and iframes by default. It can be configured to announce the title on other interactive elements (like links), but few users ever change this configuration setting.
Last time I checked, Jaws (and NVDA) did not support aria-label on non-interactive elements, only on natively interactive elements like links and form controls.
If you're trying to use both title and aria-label on form controls, then you also need to be aware of the accessible name computation that determines which of these things is used as the control's accessible name [1].
If you need to support IE8, then stick to native HTML as much as possible. It has the best support in older browsers, and thus in newer browsers as well.
Léonie.
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/accname-aam-1.1/
--
Léonie Watson - Senior accessibility engineer
@LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup PacielloGroup.com
From: Jonathan C. Cohn
Date: Thu, Jul 02 2015 5:15PM
Subject: Re: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
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You are correct, JAWS 11 has very little to no support of ARIA. Is this for an internal or external site. Also, note that Windows 10 will only work with JAWS 16 or higher. Are your clients still running Windows XP?
Let me know if you have any additional questions.
Jonathan Cohn
> On Jul 2, 2015, at 4:32 PM, Christopher Koeber < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
> I am attempting to develop Section 508 compliant web pages for JAWS 11 and
> Internet Explorer 8 (has to be those versions of said applications per
> client requirements) and one of the major problems I am having is that I
> cannot consistently get screen reader output from JAWS.
>
>
>
> With Internet Explorer 10-11+ the various ARIA+ labels are supported along
> with reading of DIV tags specially hidden by CSS, thus developing for JAWS
> is much easier.
>
>
>
> But with Internet Explorer 8 the same set of items are not read at all.
>
>
>
> In addition, it seems JAWS (11 at least) will stop reading the page even if
> there is one or two HTML markup errors.
>
>
>
> So I have two (2) questions:
>
>
>
> -
>
> Has anyone found a consistent way to develop for all browsers
> (especially older ones) as well as newer ones?
> -
>
> Is there a rock-solid no-nonsense table of what JAWS actually reads (in
> terms of "title" versus "aria-label", etc.)? What I am looking for is one
> label/text setting I can set that JAWS will read without fail on a tag,
> other tags seem to be very unreliable.
>
>
>
> I hope this find folks well.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Christopher Kurtis Koeber
>
> E: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>
> P: (301) 467-8417
> > > >
From: Christopher Koeber
Date: Thu, Jul 02 2015 5:40PM
Subject: Re: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
← Previous message | Next message →
Hey,
This is an internal site for the client; they'll always be late installing
the latest version of anything. Running Windows 7 but they won't be
upgrading from IE 8 or JAWS 11 anytime soon.
May I ask, what are the elements that JAWS 11 supports well that you know
of?
On Thu, Jul 2, 2015, 7:17 PM Jonathan C. Cohn < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> You are correct, JAWS 11 has very little to no support of ARIA. Is this
> for an internal or external site. Also, note that Windows 10 will only work
> with JAWS 16 or higher. Are your clients still running Windows XP?
> Let me know if you have any additional questions.
>
>
>
> Jonathan Cohn
>
> > On Jul 2, 2015, at 4:32 PM, Christopher Koeber < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> >
> >
> > I am attempting to develop Section 508 compliant web pages for JAWS 11
> and
> > Internet Explorer 8 (has to be those versions of said applications per
> > client requirements) and one of the major problems I am having is that I
> > cannot consistently get screen reader output from JAWS.
> >
> >
> >
> > With Internet Explorer 10-11+ the various ARIA+ labels are supported
> along
> > with reading of DIV tags specially hidden by CSS, thus developing for
> JAWS
> > is much easier.
> >
> >
> >
> > But with Internet Explorer 8 the same set of items are not read at all.
> >
> >
> >
> > In addition, it seems JAWS (11 at least) will stop reading the page even
> if
> > there is one or two HTML markup errors.
> >
> >
> >
> > So I have two (2) questions:
> >
> >
> >
> > -
> >
> > Has anyone found a consistent way to develop for all browsers
> > (especially older ones) as well as newer ones?
> > -
> >
> > Is there a rock-solid no-nonsense table of what JAWS actually reads (in
> > terms of "title" versus "aria-label", etc.)? What I am looking for is
> one
> > label/text setting I can set that JAWS will read without fail on a tag,
> > other tags seem to be very unreliable.
> >
> >
> >
> > I hope this find folks well.
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >
> >
> > Christopher Kurtis Koeber
> >
> > E: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> >
> > P: (301) 467-8417
> > > > > > > > > > > > >
From: Léonie Watson
Date: Thu, Jul 02 2015 11:38PM
Subject: Re: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
← Previous message | Next message →
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> On Behalf Of Christopher Koeber
> Sent: 03 July 2015 00:41
> This is an internal site for the client; they'll always be late installing the latest
> version of anything. Running Windows 7 but they won't be upgrading from IE
> 8 or JAWS 11 anytime soon.
>
> May I ask, what are the elements that JAWS 11 supports well that you know
> of?
Jaws 11 was released in 2009 [1]. It was the first version to support Windows 7, but it took until Jaws 12 for Windows 7 support to stabilise.
Jaws 12 was the first version to support ARIA in 2010. Whilst Jaws 11 and IE8 are the tools of choice within your organisation, this effectively rules out using ARIA on your site.
Jaws 11 does not support HTML5 either. Essentially you'll need to stick to HTML4.01 for the most part. If you decide to use things like the HTML5 sectioning elements (like main, article, nav etc.) anyway, Jaws will just degrade gracefully and treat them like divs. Anything more exciting in HTML5 than that is a lost cause with Jaws 11/IE8.
Léonie.
[1] https://www.freedomscientific.com/About/News/Article/66
--
Léonie Watson - Senior accessibility engineer
@LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup PacielloGroup.com
From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Fri, Jul 03 2015 4:38PM
Subject: Re: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
← Previous message | Next message →
One thing of note, I had to evaluate a government product a while back using only JAWS11 within IE8, and there is some early attempts at ARIA support built into it, but this is very unreliable.
E.G http://www.freedomscientific.com/Support/TechnicalSupport/Bulletin/1404
The use of role=application and role=dialog/alertdialog causes major accessibility issues, and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. ARIA Menu constructs do work if 'roving tabindex' is used instead of aria-activedescendant, and requires that the container be surrounded using role=application to invoke the correct browse modality when focus is set to a menuitem. ARIA Buttons work, but toggles do not, at least, not reliably, especially when contained within a container with role=toolbar. Most other ARIA constructs work partially and often cause more trouble than they are worth, because they convey enough to change what a screen reader user hears, but not enough to make them work accessibly.
From: Christopher Koeber
Date: Mon, Jul 06 2015 8:57AM
Subject: Re: Developing Accessible Pages Using JAWS (11 and IE 8+)
← Previous message | No next message
Hello Léonie Watson,
Never said thank you for your in depth reply; thanks!
As mentioned in subsequent threads my web application works 100% in IE 10+
with JAWS 16. Unfortunately I cannot get the client to use the latest.
In terms of the second question where JAWS 11 stops reading the output;
basically the problem occurs every time there is a JavaScript or HTML
error/problem. JAWS 11 will simply give the title of the page in these
situations and then only give basic feedback on interactivity like saying
"TAB" when you hit the tab key over an element.
On your last question; I believe it is best to break that out into a
separate question which I will do in a moment.
Thank you again for your time.
Regards,
Christopher Kurtis Koeber
E: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
P: (301) 467-8417â
Regards,
Christopher Koeber
On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:36 PM, Léonie Watson < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:
> > From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
> > On Behalf Of Christopher Koeber
> > Sent: 02 July 2015 21:33
> [...]
>
> > With Internet Explorer 10-11+ the various ARIA+ labels are supported
> along
> > with reading of DIV tags specially hidden by CSS, thus developing for
> JAWS is
> > much easier.
> >
> > But with Internet Explorer 8 the same set of items are not read at all.
> >
>
> This is because IE8 has little or no support for ARIA. Consequently, the
> versions of Jaws that were contemporary to IE8 had no ARIA support to speak
> of.
>
> It is also worth noting that FS withdrew support for IE (along with
> Windows XP) last year. If you're using Jaws 16, it's possible that IE8
> support has deteriorated with that version of Jaws.
>
> >
> > In addition, it seems JAWS (11 at least) will stop reading the page even
> if
> > there is one or two HTML markup errors.
>
> I haven't come across this behaviour in Jaws. Can you point to an example
> where this problem occurs? Can you also explain what you mean by "stops
> reading"?
>
> [...]
>
> >
> > Has anyone found a consistent way to develop for all browsers
> > (especially older ones) as well as newer ones?
>
> Use code that is supported in all versions, or use code that degrades
> gracefully in older browsers. Jaws does its own thing with IE to some
> extent, but much of what a screen reader supports is based on what the
> browser supports.
>
> >
> > Is there a rock-solid no-nonsense table of what JAWS actually reads
> (in
> > terms of "title" versus "aria-label", etc.)? What I am looking for is
> one
> > label/text setting I can set that JAWS will read without fail on a
> tag,
> > other tags seem to be very unreliable.
>
> Which element are you trying to use? The answer will vary depending on the
> element in question.
>
> For example, Jaws does not announce the title attribute on anything but
> form fields and iframes by default. It can be configured to announce the
> title on other interactive elements (like links), but few users ever change
> this configuration setting.
>
> Last time I checked, Jaws (and NVDA) did not support aria-label on
> non-interactive elements, only on natively interactive elements like links
> and form controls.
>
> If you're trying to use both title and aria-label on form controls, then
> you also need to be aware of the accessible name computation that
> determines which of these things is used as the control's accessible name
> [1].
>
> If you need to support IE8, then stick to native HTML as much as possible.
> It has the best support in older browsers, and thus in newer browsers as
> well.
>
> Léonie.
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/accname-aam-1.1/
>
>
> --
> Léonie Watson - Senior accessibility engineer
> @LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup PacielloGroup.com
>
>
>
> > > > >