RE: jQuery events , ufo and screenreaders

Hi Jonathan

Yes the hide method has been used for an animated effect. This kind of example

http://papermashup.com/demos/jquery-sliding-div/


What I was highlighting is most people will check the source code to see if something is accessible without realising what jquery events are doing to the DOM.

I see lots of pages cropping up in my organisation using lots of fancy jquery effects and then developers claiming it's accessible because they are using unobtrusive javascript and the code validates



From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Avila
Sent: 08 March 2011 13:24
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: jQuery events , ufo and screenreaders

Using .hide() would be fine if the intention was to hide the content from all users.   If you want the information to be accessible to screen reader users only, I always recommend considering first why something should be seen by screen reader users and not other users before making the decision of placing text off-screen.

If your comments regarding the .hide() method are referring to using the animated features of this method - then yes for non-decorative animation there must be an equivalent method of accessing the same information. If the animation is purely decorative, it's presence is not required to be announced to users of screen readers and having their may actually clutter the page.

Jonathan

From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org> [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org>] On Behalf Of Gavin Thomas
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 7:00 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: jquery events , ufo and screenreaders

I recently did some recent testing with a blind student using JAWS on some new pages that use some jquery events and the 'accessible' SWF object (to insert flash)

Something I noticed is, any pages that use the .hide() functionality : http://api.jquery.com/hide/  are also hidden to JAWS.
Keyboard/mouse can trigger the show() event on a link but of course this won't always occur with a screenreader as they are reading the markup

I'm now asking developers to avoid using this and implement a class which hides the content off screen.

http://webaim.org/blog/hiding-content-for-screen-readers/


The other thing I came across is the SWFobject script to embed flash: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

I always thought that JAWS would read the alternative content. But in my testing the flash object didn't appear to gain focus and it wasn't possible to get access to the alternative (html) content.

Anyone else come across this?


On the plus side I showed her the accessible youtube player : http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=2260

And she was amazed it was announcing all the controls and she was able to play the video (rather than the current youtube implementation). We will be releasing this new player on our site soon. Does beg the question why youtube can't implement this on their site to make youtube videos available to screenreader users?