Accessibly Changing Page Content on the Fly

Hi all.  This topic is probably a child of my sliding menus query of a
couple of days ago, but here goes.  It seems like popup menus and
appearing/disappearing text on web pages in general are problematic for use
with screen readers.  The menus tend to appear without the screen reader
"noticing" them, and then when you go to chase the menus down, they may or
may not still be there.  So, I guess the question is whether there's really
an effective way to implement such things and have them work with a screen
reader.  Do we look to the Document Object Model as the "right" way to add
text to a page on a dynamic basis? Do browsers support it? My cohorts who do
web page building around here are discovering that the sliding menu stuff is
problematic in printing out their pages on a printer.  Suddenly what they
hid on the screen is getting printed to the printer and making a mess.  This
has given them a reason to implement second versions of their pages again
using combo boxes in place of the sliding menus just so the pages can be
printed satisfactorily.  Ideally there'd be one page that would fit all.  Is
that a reasonable expectation? Are things getting better? and is it just a
matter of the available browsers/screen readers catching up with the W3C
specs? I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on this.

Thanks.

Jerry Weichbrodt

Received on Thursday, 9 March 2000 15:29:09 UTC