E-mail List Archives
Thread: Accessible Forms--Tabbing Question
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: Martha Fay Burtis
Date: Mon, Mar 17 2003 12:11PM
Subject: Accessible Forms--Tabbing Question
No previous message | Next message →
I'm working on developing an accessible form for an online survey.
I've had a colleague who uses JAWS look at it, and he said that while the
form was basically accessible, it was frustrating to use because of the long
list of answer choices that had to be tabbed through.
Most of the questions have a fairly short list of answer choices. But there
is one with 14 choices and another with 18. Anyone know how I could make
this better?
Thanks,
Martha Burtis
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Mon, Mar 17 2003 12:49PM
Subject: Re: Accessible Forms--Tabbing Question
← Previous message | Next message →
On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, Martha Fay Burtis wrote:
> Most of the questions have a fairly short list of answer choices. But there
> is one with 14 choices and another with 18. Anyone know how I could make
> this better?
Depending on the question and the answers, it might be feasible to use
free text input (input type="text") instead of explicit choices. If the
answers are short, it's often easier to type the answer than to select
from a list. The drawback is that the user might mistype the data and get
confused with the feedback he gets.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
From: jeb
Date: Thu, Mar 20 2003 10:12AM
Subject: Order of wording in listing phone numbers - advice
← Previous message | Next message →
I am putting together a rather large web document that contains lots of
contact information for the user. In the print design (from which I am
building the web version) the author/stylist has written out phone/fax/tty
numbers as this:
xxx-xxx-xxxx (Voice)
xxx-xxx-xxxx (Fax)
xxx-xxx-xxxx (TTY)
xxx-xxx-xxxx (Toll Free Voice)
My concern in the person reading will hear the number first and then the
designation. I am also concerned about using the designation "voice" versus
"phone." Should the preferable model be?:
Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx
TTY: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Toll Free Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
I know this is hair-splitting, but we strive to make this site a showcase
for accessible and universal design.
Thanks
John E. Brandt
Augusta, ME 04330
Webmaster for www.mainecite.org
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
www.jebswebs.com <http://www.jebswebs.com>;
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Mar 20 2003 11:33AM
Subject: Re: Order of wording in listing phone numbers - advice
← Previous message | Next message →
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, jeb wrote:
> I am putting together a rather large web document that contains lots of
> contact information for the user.
In general, bulky data is best made available via query interfaces rather
than as static files. The normal method is to have a form where the user
can type in a name and get contact information for a particular person or
a small set of persons. But it takes some work to make this work well,
preferably with fuzzy logic in matching. Besides, a large file still has
its uses, and it can be used with the browsers Find function.
> My concern in the person reading will hear the number first and then the
> designation. I am also concerned about using the designation "voice" versus
> "phone." Should the preferable model be?:
>
> Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
> Fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx
> TTY: xxx-xxx-xxxx
> Toll Free Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
I'm not sure whether "Phone" or "Voice" is better. But I think you're
right in the observation that the explanation should appear first.
The simple criterion "how does it work when read aloud" is useful here.
You might put the texts and numbers in a table, since logically they form
a matrix, with the texts in one column in a header-like manner (I think
they could even be designated as <th>) and corresponding numbers in
another column. This would also let you format the visual appearance in a
manner that people may find more pleasant, by setting the alignment of the
cells.
I would use spaces rather than hyphens as separators in phone numbers,
since the applicable standards use spaces in the reference representation,
and such presentation is slightly better - no risk of user agents getting
"-" as something they need to read as "hyphen" or as "minus".
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
From: jeb
Date: Thu, Mar 20 2003 6:43PM
Subject: RE: Order of wording in listing phone numbers - advice
← Previous message | No next message
The document is actually a series of pages. You can see the draft here:
http://www.mainecite.org/pingnew/
I've started to covert the pages containing contact info so that they read
as every so far has agree: designation and then number. I did not know about
the hyphen. Guess I will have to go back and remove them too.
Thanks for comments.
jeb
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, jeb wrote:
> I am putting together a rather large web document that contains lots of
> contact information for the user.
In general, bulky data is best made available via query interfaces rather
than as static files. The normal method is to have a form where the user
can type in a name and get contact information for a particular person or
a small set of persons. But it takes some work to make this work well,
preferably with fuzzy logic in matching. Besides, a large file still has
its uses, and it can be used with the browsers Find function.
> My concern in the person reading will hear the number first and then the
> designation. I am also concerned about using the designation "voice"
versus
> "phone." Should the preferable model be?:
>
> Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
> Fax: xxx-xxx-xxxx
> TTY: xxx-xxx-xxxx
> Toll Free Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
I'm not sure whether "Phone" or "Voice" is better. But I think you're
right in the observation that the explanation should appear first.
The simple criterion "how does it work when read aloud" is useful here.
You might put the texts and numbers in a table, since logically they form
a matrix, with the texts in one column in a header-like manner (I think
they could even be designated as <th>) and corresponding numbers in
another column. This would also let you format the visual appearance in a
manner that people may find more pleasant, by setting the alignment of the
cells.
I would use spaces rather than hyphens as separators in phone numbers,
since the applicable standards use spaces in the reference representation,
and such presentation is slightly better - no risk of user agents getting
"-" as something they need to read as "hyphen" or as "minus".
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/