Re: Voiceover detection in JavaScript

I understand your point, and would be glad to know if my scrollable div is now working on the iPhone, whereas before it was not.

It is a standard construct, An outer Div with a fixed height and width, and a firstChild Div where all of the scrollable content is located. The CSS simply uses overflow:auto on the top level Div with the fixed height and width to make it scrollable, and scrollTop and scrollLeft is used to change the visual orientation when keyboard only users interact with it. 
 
It's quite basic, and if it is not programmed according to spec, it would be great to know where this is the case.

It's at
http://whatsock.com/bootstrap
on the Scroll tab.

My desire is to fix any issues now, and not wait years for a manufacturer who may or may not get around to making them work.


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Alastair Campbell 
  To: Bryan Garaventa 
  Cc: WAI Interest Group 
  Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 2:01 PM
  Subject: Re: Voiceover detection in JavaScript


  "I have a scrollable div. I have programmed it to be fully keyboard accessible."


  I'm interested to know what needed "programming" there, why wasn't it accessible to start with?


  With a simple test case, a scrollable div itself is fine with VoiceOver:
  http://alastairc.ac/testing/scrollable-div.html



  It does not scroll itself visibly, but VoiceOver reads all the content.




    "The only place it is not accessible is on iOS because of Voiceover, since Voiceover doesn't read content that is scrolled off screen."


  I'm not convinced that is the case, there must be something else going on. Have you got a URL you can share?



    "So apparently, what I'm hearing here is that this is actually desirable, because the potential of developers screwing things up is greater than the actual benefit of providing accessible features.


    Sort of like saying, blind people are not allowed to use this feature, for their convenience.

    Is this correct?"


  No. What you are hearing is that *if* coded to (HTML) standards and (WCAG) guidelines, it would be better for VoiceOver to fix an issue than the developer. [1]


  However, I doubt that is the case.


  -Alastair


  1] Worth checking out how the different guidelines fit together for understanding this aspect: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components.php