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Thread: RE: JAWS and online forms question
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From: Joel Sanda
Date: Thu, Feb 20 2003 2:47PM
Subject: RE: JAWS and online forms question
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Lisa;
Without seeing your HTML this is a little tricky to diagnose.
However - I'm not sure it's all that unreasonable to expect users to switch
modes. That's why the modes are there: forms, table, and 'normal' mode for
JAWS is what provides the flexibility. If a JAWS user cannot or doesn't know
how to swtich modes they will likely have extreme difficulties on most sites
- even adhering to Section 508 provisions.
One final thought: is it possible to construct the form so the user doesn't
need all the instructions? For example: input field 1 should be linked to a
label element that states what the form is for. Since JAWS will announce the
presence of a form, the user will know to use the "enter" key to enter forms
mode and begin entering text, based upon the fields description in the label
element.
Joel Sanda, M.A.
Standards & Accessibility Consultant
Consulting Services Group
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> f. 303.873.7449
> eCollege Supporting your Success
-----Original Message-----
From: Miller, Lisa F. (LMS) [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 2:35 PM
To: Web AIM Forum (E-mail)
Subject: JAWS and online forms question
We are developing an online form, and are having problems navigating thru
the from with JAWS. There are a number of labeled input fields, which each
have text instructions preceeding them, such as:
==This is a long instruction on how to correctly fill out field 1, plus any
reference information which might be needed.
Field1 Label: ___________
This is a long instruction on how to correctly fill out field 2, plus any
reference information which might be needed.
Field2 Label: ____________
==
When our tester navigates this page with JAWS, the instructions lines are
skipped because it is navigating thru the input fields only - to get the
text, he has to change modes, which a blind person would not know to do -
there is no indication to the user that the text is there.
Right now the page is built with one set of FORM tags - is there any way,
other than wrapping each individual input field with its own FORM tag, to
get JAWS to read the instruction text? We are debating placing the text
into read only textareas, but this would not be our first choice. Has
anyone else ran across this - maybe already solved this for us?
Thanks,
Lisa F. Miller
BWXT Y-12 - Technical Computing
Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
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