RE: QUESTION: use of JavaScript to comply with Sect 508

Last time I looked at the site, it detected IE browsers and created the
flyout stuff for them, giving everyone else a version that was more static.
It is definitely promoting their products, but that's not a big surprise from
any commercial website. I didn't go so far as to look at what properties the
scripts use.

So I am not suree if this is answering Jim's question, but it does answer one
of Dave's.

Charles McCN

On Sun, 7 Jan 2001, Jim Thatcher wrote:

  David, either I completely don't understand your answer, or you didn't
  understand my question. I assume the former, but in case it is the latter, I
  will ask again.

  The Microsoft site has menus that appear as a result of JavaScript and
  mouseovers. The JavaScript code for the "local" menus, for example, is in
  http://www.microsoft.com/library/toolbar/en-us/localHP9.js.
  The text of those menu items appears in the IE5 document model so the links
  are available to screen readers and Home Page Reader.

  QUESTION: Under what circumstances do such links appear in the (Microsoft
  IE5) object model when they are not visible, and have not been visible?

  Jim
  jim@jimthatcher.com
  Accessibility Consulting
  http://jimthatcher.com
  512-306-0931

  -----Original Message-----
  From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
  Behalf Of David Woolley
  Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 11:03 AM
  To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
  Subject: Re: QUESTION: use of JavaScript to comply with Sect 508


  > David, do you know what are the circumstances under which such items that
  > would be rendered via JavaScript appear in the DOM even though they have
  not
  > been rendered visually?

  The wrong way of doing this is to initialise their absolute position to be
  off the screen.  A better way is to give them a CSS attribute (display?)
  to make them invisible.

  NB  You are not really talking about the web in general here, but really
  about users of recent versions of Internet Explorer.  These effects almost
  certainly rely on the Microsoft proprietory document object model, or they
  dynamically detect IE and Netscape (and the rest just have to reverse
  engineer
  and emulate one of these).

  (A lot of the off topic questions on the www-html list are essentially
  people confusing browser object model scripting with HTML and expecting that
  it is in some way standardised across browsers.  Object models are popularly
  known as Javascript and Javascript is popularly known as HTML.)

  Note the only part of Microsoft for which I permit JS by default is the
  software updates site (an essential part of the site for anyone using
  JS - you should ideally check it daily as the hackers will!)  I generally
  only notice Javascript when it doesn't fall back cleanly.



-- 
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, Australia
until 6 January 2001 at:
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Sunday, 7 January 2001 21:01:45 UTC