RE: Invisible elements for additional link text [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

Deborah, in my tests with off-screen text placed before and after
on-screen link text in spans provided slightly different results.  For
example, when I spoke the on-screen text Dragon Naturally Speaking 11.5
Pro provided indicators for each of the different links with that text.  I
did find that the link text "read more" was not good as Dragon has a
command "click restore" that it had trouble differentiating.

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net [mailto:deborah.kaplan@suberic.net]
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 10:08 AM
To: Harry Loots
Cc: Joe Chidzik; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Invisible elements for additional link text [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]

I was the person who sent the original e-mail mentioning Dragon
NaturallySpeaking, so to answer a few questions and clear a couple of
misconceptions:

1. On the test page I just created
(<http://suberic.net/~deborah.kaplan/foo.html>) and tested with
NaturallySpeaking 11.5 and Internet Explorer 9, Opera 12, and Firefox 15,
it was never as easy as these usual disambiguating numbers next to the
links. Internet Explorer insisted on the full invisible name of the link
being dictated -- even though that is invisible to the screen -- and could
not disambiguate between two of these links which had identical text; it
always choose the first selection. Opera could hear the names of the links
but refused to select any of them, and Firefox was just thoroughly
confused. So for Dragon user to reach any of these links it would be MORE
difficult then it would be for them to reach a page that didn't have the
invisible text. Dictating the names of the links would fail, and the
Dragon user would have *no idea why*.

Yes, she could access the links by other means (voice tabbing or voice
mouse control, for example), but this would be after repeatedly trying to
dictate the name of the link.

I'm going to run more tests on this when I have more time, because if this
is accurate it is going to make me stop recommending this technique for
partial link text.

In any case, in my opinion, this fails 3.2, predictability.

2. I would hope that anyone who uses the tooltip solution suggested
earlier makes sure that tooltip is also activated on tab as well as mouse
over, otherwise we come back to a solution which is broken for Dragon
users.

-Deborah
--
Deborah Kaplan
accessibility team co-lead
dreamwidth Studios LLC

Received on Thursday, 13 September 2012 15:16:50 UTC