RE: accessible forms

I'm not ruling out the possibility that the code isn't valid, although it
seems to be, or that my limited evaluation resources aren't to blame (I used
HomePage Reader v. 3.0 instead of JAWS.  I am but a simple web designer...).
But here's the scenario:

The menu options show up as "this option [off]" unless one is selected, in
which case it changes to "this option [selected]."  Once a user has selected
their option from the drop-down menu, the only way - outside of using the
mouse to go to the next form field - to get anywhere is to finish tabbing
through the remaining options in that menu.  The only way to avoid this is
to tab PAST the entire menu itself.

If the fault is invalidly coded HTML, then that may still be an issue to
address, as the forms are quite commonly done this way, and I haven't yet
run across any that my screen reader doesn't treat in the same way.

Chris O'Kennon
Commonwealth of Virginia Webmaster/
VIPNet Portal Architect
www.myvirginia.org <http://www.myvirginia.org> 
 
______________________________________
"Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore,
you will never know the terror of being forever lost at sea."


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org]
> Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 2:29 PM
> To: Chris O'Kennon
> Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; 'j.chetwynd@btinternet.com'
> Subject: Re: accessible forms
> 
> 
> Do you mean the user has to tab through each option in the 
> menu? This isn't
> normally the case if you are using validly coded HTML forms.
> 
> Could you explain the use case a little more please?
> 
> cheers
> 
> Chaals
> 
> On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, Chris O'Kennon wrote:
> 
> 
>   I read the client-side scripting draft [1] and the html 
> techniques for wcag
>   1.0 [2].  I don't see anything about coding drop-down menus 
> so a user can
>   move from the menu to the next form field without having to 
> tab through
>   everything else in the menu.  For example, the Virginia Commonwealth
>   Calendar [3] has several drop-down menus needed to access 
> the government
>   meetings.  In order to select an agency, a screen reader 
> would then have to
>   go through the rest of the options before the user could go 
> to the next form
>   field.  Although this allows the application to be 
> technically used, the
>   difficulty in going through 200 agencies makes it 
> effectively inaccessible.
> 
>   Could this be addressed in a future draft of the 
> client-side scripting
>   techniques?  Or is it already there and I just missed it?
> 
>   [1] http://www.learningdifficulty.org/develop/w3c-scripts.html
>   [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-WCAG10-HTML-TECHS-20000920/
>   [3] http://www.vipnet.org/portal/cgi-bin/calendar.cgi
> 
>   Chris O'Kennon
>   Commonwealth of Virginia Webmaster/
>   VIPNet Portal Architect
>   www.myvirginia.org
> 
>   ______________________________________
>   "Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore,
>   you will never know the terror of being forever lost at sea."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  
> phone: +61 409 134 136
> W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI  
> fax: +33 4 92 38 78 22
> Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
> (or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia 
> Antipolis Cedex, France)
>

Received on Friday, 21 June 2002 14:38:57 UTC