Table with AJAX Issues

Hi;

Pointers appreciated if there's a better alias to ask this 
question on.

We have an Ajaxified HTML table that only downloads a sub-set of 
the total number of possible data sets [rows] the table could 
call into the DOM. The Ajax component is a function in a 
prototype table that gets triggered only when the user scrolls 
thru the table. The movement of the scrollbar triggers he 
function to downloads 5 more rows to one end of the table and 
tosses 5 rows from the opposite end at the same time. The end 
result is there is always only 10 rows downloaded into the DOM at 
one time regardless of whether the table actually "contains" 10, 
20, 200, or 2,000,000.

People who are sighted keyboard only or mouse users have no 
problem interacting wuth the table and its HTML content, or 
knowing what row they're on and how big the table atually is [a 
table header bar provides both these items, it says, for example, 
"1 to 5 of 20 showing"]. This isn't the case for users who are 
not sighted; here are the two issues we've identified in the 
current design:
  1. The user never knows for sure the total number of rows 
contained in it, they only know about the rows contained in the 
Browser's DOM [1].

  2. Screen Readers tested don't interact with, or don't 
consistently interact with the table's scrollbar. In our case, 
they don't interact at all with the scrollbars so new rows never 
get posted because the scrollbar never moves.

These problems might be overcome if more rows were downloaded - 
JAWS scrolled a table with 45 rows downloaded for example - but 
this may only address the problem JAWS' has while not addressing 
the same issue in WindowEyes. The user can also always refer to 
the header mentioned above to see how big the table is - but the 
result of a general table info request of a screen reader will 
always say a different total number of table rows then the number 
givven in the header row.

Basically, the above possible solutions are hacks that don't 
fully address the problems. Which leads to my 2 question to the 
alias:
  1. Has any of you dealt with this type of situation?
  2. If so, what was your solution?

Earl

[1] - JAWS happens to retain all rows visited in its DOM.
whose function is to download a sub-set of

Received on Saturday, 31 March 2007 20:02:07 UTC