Re: Using onMouseOver [was Re: FW: making applets accessible

How does OnMouseOver driving the status line interact with screen readers?
How many users have evaluated this?

Al

At 02:54 PM 2/17/99 -0500, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>That's an interesting use for populating the status line using onMouseOver.
> Maybe there are other uses also for this trick.
>
>For example, you could process a table so that the row and column headings
>appear on the status line when the mouse is on a cell.  Folks with low
>vision could position the mouse there already: folks using screenreaders
>could use the send-mouse-to-screenreader-cursor command.  
>
>This would also be handy for sighted folks when the column or row headings
>are scrolled off the screen.
>
>(see implementation hints in P.S.)
>
>Len
>
>P.S.
>
>This use of mouseover requires wrapping each cell in an A link.
>
>If anyone tries this there's a glitch you've got to watch which I ran into
>on my home page http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday
>
>If the cell isn't a link already, Netscape 4.06 requires the following
>
><A href=""  onclick="return false" ...
>
>You need the href for Netscape to respond to the onMouseOver (something I
>consider a bug) and you need the onclick="return false" to prevent netscape
>from trying to go to that href when the user clicks there.  Kluge, Kluge,
>Kluge.
>
>At 03:26 PM 2/17/99 +0000, Silas S. Brown wrote:
>>> Actually it did work.
>>
>>On www.att.com yes, but not on the Temple site I'm afraid.  www.att.com 
>>has the URLs in separate parameters, whereas Temple embeds them in the 
>>same parameters as the text.
>>
>>> BTW, the <A...>'s contain onMouseOver="window.status='etc...  What are
they
>>> for?
>>
>>Normally when a sighted user moves the mouse over a link, the status 
>>window displays the URL that the link points to.  If that link has been 
>>redirected through the gateway, the URL will be awfully long (including 
>>all the options etc) and would not fit in the status window.  The 
>>onMouseOver stuff makes it look like it's not redirected, except I put 
>>the word "Access" in just to make sure there's no confusion.
>>
>>It turns out that most of the people using the gateway around here are 
>>fully sighted Japanese (and a few Chinese) who want to look at those 
>>pages without needing the fonts (the gateway can substitute a load of 
>>gif files and handle the encoding detection automatically).  And then 
>>there are one or two sighties who use it just because they like their 
>>paragraphs indented rather than a line left between them.
>>
>>Also, I must admit, I've used the status window before.  I do have 
>>partial sight and I don't always want to work quite like totally blind 
>>people do; this is the advantage of having something that is 
>>configurable.
>>
>>Regards
>>
>>-- Silas S Brown, St John's College Cambridge UK
>http://epona.ucam.org/~ssb22/
>>
>>"He that is slow to anger is better than a mighty man, and he that is
>>controlling his spirit than the one capturing a city" - Proverbs 16:32
>>
>>
>>
>-------
>Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
>Universal Design Engineer, Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
>Adjunct Professor, Electrical Engineering
>Temple University
>
>Ritter Hall Annex, Room 423, Philadelphia, PA 19122
>kasday@acm.org        

>(215} 204-2247 (voice)
>(800) 750-7428 (TTY)
>

Received on Wednesday, 17 February 1999 16:55:42 UTC