RE: Drop-down navigation boxes (fwd)

As I understand it they are fine in english, but casue a problem in TIFLOWIN,
a common spanish screen reader (because it is cheap, so widely used, but
hangs when the screen changes). Interestingly, one of the options Lynx
provides is to render drop-down boxes as checkbuttons instead - there must be
a reason why this seemed desirable.

I am interested in knowing if they are still a problem, so if anyone has
up-to-date information it would be nice to find out.

Charles McCN

On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Wayne Myers-Education wrote:

  Hi,
  
  This question came up recently in the BBC - I thought I'd answered
  correctly, and would like to double check I'm right, since I am no longer
  wholly sure. I have been operating with the idea that no form element in
  HTML is in itself a problem, it's just a question of creating the form in
  such a way as to be navigable with the keys only. Is that right? Or should I
  get back to my colleague and tell them no, avoid drop-down boxes.
  
  BTW, in case anyone was confused by the misinfo, drop-down navigation boxes
  in HTML require neither Java nor Java script - a server side CGI script
  (about three lines of Perl, maybe more in other languages), can provide a
  drop-down box handler that will function identically regardless of the
  calling browser, and will also remove the temptation (or indeed ability) to
  implement something that lacks a 'Do The Thing I Just Asked You To' button
  and acts as soon as thing selected in the drop-down is selected. (Ugh.)
  
  Cheers etc.,
  
  Wayne
  
  Wayne Myers
  Software Engineer, BBC Digital Media,
  Coder/Producer, Betsie Project
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/betsie/
  0181-752-6116
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia

Received on Tuesday, 15 February 2000 01:31:00 UTC