RE: Fill in the blank questions - best approach for denoting the blank

Ted,

If you use the CSS span:before { content: "Blank" } the content would be available to the screen reader.

Jon


From: Gies, Edward M. (ELS-DAY) [mailto:Ted.Gies@elsevier.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2016 2:08 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Fill in the blank questions - best approach for denoting the blank

Hi all,

We are working on a LMS system with fill in the blank questions.
The particular type of fill in the blank is a simple variety where the user reads the text with the blank followed by a reveal the answer button.

As an example, this sentence shows a blank using 4 underscores:

The best approach for providing visually hidden text is ____ because it uses modern standards and supported across browsers.

Within the HTML we are using underscores to visually render the blanks within each sentence.
These underscores are not read at all by JAWS 17 or NVDA using default verbosity settings.

Does anyone have a good approach for providing a text equivalent?  My first thought was to put in a CSS hidden word for "blank" right before the underscores.

Thanks,
Ted