Programmatically determining color

I just did a quick check to assure myself that JAWS recognizes and
reports text colors.

It *does not* report the color!

For example, the page at 
http://www.joleschgroup.com/promo/narms/contact.jsp
Shows required fields in red, using CSS (class="reqtitle" vs.
class="notreqtitle").

For the text beside the Last name field, JAWS (Ins+F) reports: 
"Font is verdana, Helvetica, sans serif 8 pt text alignment: left align,
center of cell, top of cell, comma (yes, it says the *word* comma!).
Then it stops. 


Behavior on the form at
http://ontcurl.com/index.html?loc=9&lsubnav=95&main=info&url=clubupdate_
org&upper=title
Is the same.

Of course this is a user agent flaw-- JAWS is obviously capable of
accessing the CSS information, but either it doesn't check for color on
Web pages (it *does* report it in MS Word!) or the JAWS code is broken.
SC 1.3.2 (L1) says:
<blockquote>
1.3.2 When
information is conveyed by color,
the color can be
programmatically determined
or the information is also conveyed through another means that does not
depend on the user's ability to differentiate colors.
</blockquote>

But (at least for now) simply making the color programmatically
determined doesn't actually work for people using JAWS. I don't have
Window-Eyes or Home Page Reader at home (so much for *Home* page
reader<grin>) so can't do further checking.

Ugh.
John
"Good design is accessible design."

Dr. John M. Slatin, Director 
Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin 
FAC 248C 
1 University Station G9600 
Austin, TX 78712 
ph 512-495-4288, fax 512-495-4524 
email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu 
Web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility 

Received on Thursday, 29 December 2005 16:46:37 UTC