Re: Setting focus in a form and screenreaders

Mike Brown wrote:
> 
> I've been asked to create a form and on page load have the focus set to 
> a particular field in the form. I've used some javascript to do that.
> 
> It then occurred to me that a screenreader, on loading the page, would 
> be immediately at the form filed and miss all the information before the 
> field.
> 
> I tested briefly in a demo copy of JAWS and found that to be the case.
> 
> It seems to me this is a major accessibility issue for the form. Would 
> an experienced screenreader user has some way of overriding this 
> behaviour which would mitigate the problem? Are they any alternative 
> ways of accomplishing the same thing?

The user could disable javascript, which is a bit like turning a light 
bulb off with a hammer. On a side note, I personally find sites that 
take away my control and "helpfully" focus a form field for me very 
irritating...the amount of times I've visited www.dictionary.com, 
clicked on the input, started typing the word, and *then* (as the page 
takes a while to load) the javascript kicks in, focusses the input, and 
on my next keystroke I erase anything I've typed in already as all my 
previous text was selected from the field getting focussed...

I'd circumvent the issue by simply not auto-focussing the field.


-- 
Patrick H. Lauke
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Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
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Received on Sunday, 23 April 2006 22:20:43 UTC