- From: Bailey, Bruce <Bruce.Bailey@ed.gov>
- Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 09:44:49 -0400
- To: "David Woolley" <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>, "WAI Interest Group" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> Tools like JAWS are AT, not screen readers. My first thought was, "What is a ridiculous assertion!" I now find it profound. I am hoping you will start a new thread expounding on this idea. My best example of JAWS _not_ being a screen reader follows.... We were recently trouble shooting an HTML form that was designed to filled out on-screen, printed, and mailed in. There were lots of on-screen instructions that disappeared when printing from the regular browser File > Print... menu (there was not a dedicated submit button or Javascript for printing). This was done using the @media print construct of course. The bizarre thing was that JAWS was not picking up the on-screen instructions. The page used formally valid CSS and HTML, the problem turned out to be bug regarding how JAWS handled @screen and/or @import, I forget exactly. I do remember that we did come up with an acceptable work around that wasn't too much of a hack. I bring this up now because, if JAWS really was a screen reader, of course it would have read those on-screen instructions! So, what should we call assistive technology like JAWS and Window Eyes if screen reader is not really accurate?
Received on Monday, 4 April 2005 13:44:52 UTC