Hi Bruce:
Sorry, I meant to post to the list, and didn't realize until after I sent it.
Also, I think others made the same point, even more clearly than I, so didn't think I could add anything really useful.
-Steve
Steve McCaffrey
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Information Technology Services
New York State Department of Education
(518)-473-3453
smccaffr@mail.nysed.gov
Member,
New York State Workgroup on Accessibility to Information Technology
Web Design Subcommittee
http://web.nysed.gov/cio/access/webdesignsubcommittee.html
Forwarded message 1
Hi Christopher:
I don't have IE 5, I have IE 4.01.
There are two distinct issues regarding mouse over. One is keyboard alternative access and the other is the effect of the mouse over event.
Universal design implies it must be keyboard access to the content, that is, 1. assume the user is not using mouse at all.
Assuming it then works, the next question is
2. whether the effect of the event is accessible to screen reader users.
On your test, when I tried tabbing, my screen reader said nothing at all. Thus, it appears to be not keyboard accesible, 1 above.
When I turned on my Jaws cursor (simulated mouse pointer), the experiment worked fine.
-Steve
Steve McCaffrey
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Information Technology Services
New York State Department of Education
(518)-473-3453
smccaffr@mail.nysed.gov
Member,
New York State Workgroup on Accessibility to Information Technology
Web Design Subcommittee
http://web.nysed.gov/cio/access/webdesignsubcommittee.html
>>> "Christopher Atkinson" <cwa@pipeline.com> 04/06/00 11:08PM >>>
Dear Steven:
If IE Mac 5 displays the behavior you describe, it would be a bug. According
to Microsoft's SDK for IE 5, onfocus and onblur are available on IE Mac as
of IE Mac 4. As far as I can tell from my experiments on IE 5 PC and
Microsoft's documentation, as long as the DIV has its TABINDEX set, you
should be able to use onfocus and onblur.
The following works as expected in IE PC 5:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>onFocus Experiment</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P>Experiment to determine availability of "onFocus" event handler</P>
<DIV ID="DivOne" ONFOCUS="this.innerText='Div One gained focus'"
ONBLUR="this.innerText='Div One lost focus'" TABINDEX=1>I am DIV One. On
focus my text will change to tell you I have focus. On loss of focus my text
will change to tell you that I have lost focus. But you will never see this
text again.</DIV>
<DIV ID="DivTwo" TABINDEX=2>I am DIV Two. I do nothing on focus.</DIV>
<DIV ID="DivThree" ONFOCUS="alert('Hello, World.')" ONBLUR="alert('Goodbye,
World')" TABINDEX=3>I am DIV Three. On focus, I will display a "Hello World"
alert. On loss of focus , I will display a "Goodbye World" alert. My text
will remain unchanged.</DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Since I do not know anything about how screenreaders or other assistive
technologies work, I have prepared two DIVs, one with text change and one
with alert in the hopes that one of the approaches will work. The text in
the particular DIV describes the intended effect. If there is some other
effect that is needed to test this against any particular technology, tell
me and I will add another DIV.
If you would like to try this online rather than cutting and pasting, please
go to http://www.pipeline.com/~cwa/onFocusExperiment.html.
Regards,