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Thread: how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?

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From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Wed, Jan 25 2012 9:48AM
Subject: how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?
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what's the best way to indicate navigation facets to screenreader
users? Sighted users have come to understand what facets are by
their location on the page, and their formatting. What are the
appropriate indicators to people who are using screen readers?

I understand that there is WAI-ARIA which you could use to
indicate that they are navigation, for example, but facets have a
very particular kind of navigation use, which is specifically
narrowing down the results of a search. Is it enough to put a
screenreader-only header above the facets section labeled
"facets" or some such? I feel troubled about this solution,
because for all that sighted users have come to understand what
those choices down the left-hand navigation are when they are
browsing Amazon or target or Best Buy, I can't imagine the most
people know that they are called "facets" unless they work in web
design, librarianship, or some other information-related field.

-deborah

From: Jared Smith
Date: Wed, Jan 25 2012 10:00AM
Subject: Re: how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?
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On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 9:51 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I can't imagine the most
> people know that they are called "facets" unless they work in web
> design, librarianship, or some other information-related field.

I obviously work in this field and I have no idea what you're talking
about. Do you have an example of facets?

I think the fact I (and I suppose most people) don't know what they
are indicates that labeling them "facets" probably isn't going to
help.

Jared

From: Lucy Greco
Date: Wed, Jan 25 2012 10:09AM
Subject: Re: how to best indicate facets to screen reader users?
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Hello:
I have recently looked at a project that used them a lot. And the best thing we could come up with was labeling them narrow your search .
We had three different types of facets
We had edit boxes and combo boxes and check boxes. The way we did it was
For the edit field we said type a word or words you want to be included to narrow your search
For the combo boxes we said pick witch department would you like to narrow your search to
And for the check boxes we changed it to would you like to pick this to look only at.... witch was three different timeframes.
Hope this helps Lucy
.
p.s. we also had a button to add more of the same fields to expand the search. .
Lucy Greco
Assistive Technology Specialist
Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
(510) 643-7591
http://attlc.berkeley.edu
http://webaccess.berkeley.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:58 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 9:51 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I can't imagine the most
> people know that they are called "facets" unless they work in web
> design, librarianship, or some other information-related field.

I obviously work in this field and I have no idea what you're talking
about. Do you have an example of facets?

I think the fact I (and I suppose most people) don't know what they
are indicates that labeling them "facets" probably isn't going to
help.

Jared

From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Wed, Jan 25 2012 10:15AM
Subject: Re: how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?
← Previous message | Next message →

Jared Smith wrote:

>> I can't imagine the most
>> people know that they are called "facets" unless they work in web
>> design, librarianship, or some other information-related field.
>
> I obviously work in this field and I have no idea what you're talking
> about. Do you have an example of facets?

*facepalm* Sorry -- I suspect it's a term more widely used in
some industries than others, and now that I look around it seems
to be mostly used in e-commerce and libraries. Sorry about that!

Faceted navigation is the technique for narrowing down the
results of the search by clicking on displayed filters which are
exposed based on what are the sensible filters for the search
you've done, so you don't need to know much about searching or a
site's content to be given more and more useful information about
what you can find.

In general, faceted navigation is what people are used to seeing
on large e-commerce sites. If you search at Amazon for "web" you
will be given a choice of "Department" (books, music, clothing
and accessories, etc.), "Format" (Paperback, audio CD, board
book, etc.), "Author", etc. In this way, you don't need to know
ahead of time what Amazon has, because the faceted navigation let
you know that there are 14,104 items in their "Health and
Personal Care" department with the keyword "web".

There is some parallel to the Amazon faceted navigation and most
e-commerce sites: Best Buy, Etsy, Target, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_search

In libraries, it's a way of letting you see format, author, year,
etc. Worldcat.org has a pretty good example of faceted search.

-Deborah

From: November Samnee
Date: Wed, Jan 25 2012 10:21AM
Subject: Re: how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?
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You may not know what they are called, but you've definitely seen them. It
is a way to narrow down, or filter down search results. Google has them in
the left pane of a search results page, which is pretty much the main
physical location I've seen them. (See Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_search)

We typically have the content in an aria landmark role for navigation, and
place them in the code after the actual search results. The testing we've
done with screen reader users show that it makes sense for our customers,
but your target customers may be different.

Also, our facets have a visible heading of "Narrow" because in usability
testing we found that even the word "filter" was confusing to users.

November Samnee


On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:58 AM, Jared Smith < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 9:51 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> > I can't imagine the most
> > people know that they are called "facets" unless they work in web
> > design, librarianship, or some other information-related field.
>
> I obviously work in this field and I have no idea what you're talking
> about. Do you have an example of facets?
>
> I think the fact I (and I suppose most people) don't know what they
> are indicates that labeling them "facets" probably isn't going to
> help.
>
> Jared
>

From: Ryan Hemphill
Date: Wed, Jan 25 2012 11:51AM
Subject: Re: how to best indicate facets to screen reader users?
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This is a very typical issue that I have been running into and it
demonstrates some of the missing aspects of the current draft of ARIA. My
first option would to be either to send an aria-live notification/update
and somehow provide information and links that allow the user to jump back
and forth between these facets.

We are working on an RIA currently that is supposed to house a whole slew
of programs that have strong contextual relationships, so trust me when I
say that I feel your pain.

Ryan

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Lucy Greco < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >wrote:

> Hello:
> I have recently looked at a project that used them a lot. And the best
> thing we could come up with was labeling them narrow your search .
> We had three different types of facets
> We had edit boxes and combo boxes and check boxes. The way we did it was
> For the edit field we said type a word or words you want to be included
> to narrow your search
> For the combo boxes we said pick witch department would you like to narrow
> your search to
> And for the check boxes we changed it to would you like to pick this to
> look only at.... witch was three different timeframes.
> Hope this helps Lucy
> .
> p.s. we also had a button to add more of the same fields to expand the
> search. .
> Lucy Greco
> Assistive Technology Specialist
> Disabled Student's Program UC Berkeley
> (510) 643-7591
> http://attlc.berkeley.edu
> http://webaccess.berkeley.edu
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = [mailto:
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:58 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?
>
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 9:51 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> > I can't imagine the most
> > people know that they are called "facets" unless they work in web
> > design, librarianship, or some other information-related field.
>
> I obviously work in this field and I have no idea what you're talking
> about. Do you have an example of facets?
>
> I think the fact I (and I suppose most people) don't know what they
> are indicates that labeling them "facets" probably isn't going to
> help.
>
> Jared
>

From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Thu, Jan 26 2012 1:09PM
Subject: Re: how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?
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Thank you, everyone, for the very useful answers about facets!

-Deborah

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Sat, Jan 28 2012 2:51PM
Subject: Re: how to best indicate facets to screenreader users?
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Deborah,

There was a thread about facets over at SitePoint the other day. It
may give some additional information: http://is.gd/s5sxyo
--
Ryan E. Benson



On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 11:51 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> what's the best way to indicate navigation facets to screenreader
> users? Sighted users have come to understand what facets are by
> their location on the page, and their formatting. What are the
> appropriate indicators to people who are using screen readers?
>
> I understand that there is WAI-ARIA which you could use to
> indicate that they are navigation, for example, but facets have a
> very particular kind of navigation use, which is specifically
> narrowing down the results of a search. Is it enough to put a
> screenreader-only header above the facets section labeled
> "facets" or some such? I feel troubled about this solution,
> because for all that sighted users have come to understand what
> those choices down the left-hand navigation are when they are
> browsing Amazon or target or Best Buy, I can't imagine the most
> people know that they are called "facets" unless they work in web
> design, librarianship, or some other information-related field.
>
> -deborah
>
>