- From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:55:06 +0000
- To: Aaron Leventhal <aaronlev@moonset.net>
- Cc: wai-xtech@w3.org
aloha, aaron! did you notice that when screen-scraping is turned ON in JAWS (that is, when the virtual cursor is turned off), it is possible to hear the pseudo-content spoken, but that is NOT the default setting for JAWS when dealing with anything that uses a DOM or parses HTML, and it is not an intuitive reaction on the part of an end-user to unspoken text, because the non-sighted user doesn't even know that it is there, so why would that user turn off JAWS' virtual cursor to manually search the screen for the generated text, either by gross navigation or by searching for the generated text, which takes foreknowledge that most users will NOT have -- i still maintain that while reading document source is the course of last resort, but is an undue burden on the end user, who simply wants to ascertain what is on the page -- the only reason i tried the strategy is that it is necessary to leave virtual cursor mode in order to get most of the mozilla aria examples to work correctly) curtis chen, if you're reading this, how can FireVox provide exposure of CSS-generated content? i do believe there are very valid use cases; for example, explicit contextual markers, such as "Issue: " or "Big Issue: " which, in the HTML5 editors' draft: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5 are currently distinguished by color changes and visual markers (boxes) alone -- moreover, the style rule defined for an "Issue: " is the same as that defined for a "Big Issue: ", so even if an AT could pick up and programmatically detect the hexadecimal or rgb values defined for "issue" and "big issue", the user still wouldn't be able to distinguish between the two, save for the use of :before and :after to provide explicit markers that "this type of content starts here" and "this type of content stops here" (yes, i know that since they are the same visually, the magnitude of the issue is also indistinguishable visually, this itself should be corrected) as you may have guessed, this test is part of my action item to work on improving the accessibility of the HTML5 draft's internal stylesheet another valid use case is for unsupported natural languages, as in the example located at: http://tinyurl.com/2bphmo as well as an indication of page structure through pseudo-textual markers; http://tinyurl.com/ywy66n obviously (unless the end user wanted or needed to see them) the pseudo-text would be unobtrusive/not visible -- an alternate strategy that will work when CSS support is not available is to use the "overflow" technique C7 of WCAG 2.0 to visually obscure explicit contextual or labelling text, but keep it available to a screen reader and to a text-only/CSS-incapable browser, in which all styling is lost, leaving the explicit text as contextual markers... oh, and a question for you, aaron: does FF2 or FF3 support CSS2, Section 18.2, "User preferences for colors" http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/ui.html#system-colors thanks, gregory. ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Original Message ----------- From: Aaron Leventhal <aaronlev@moonset.net> To: "Gregory J. Rosmaita" <oedipus@hicom.net> Cc: wai-xtech@w3.org Sent: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:54:16 -0500 Subject: Re: simple test of screen reader support for CSS-generated text > Firefox 2 & 3 currently fail with a screen reader. > > At the moment the only generated content we expose to > accessibility APIs is for list bullet text (e.g. list item > numbering). It's not a simple thing to do :before and :after, > and for the moment we've deprioritized it until we see an > actual use case. > > - Aaron > > Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote: > > aloha! > > > > i have placed a very simple test of the accessibility of CSS-generated > > content in www-archive -- the simple URI for the attachment is: > > > > http://tinyurl.com/2m4h2m > > > > explanatory text at: > > > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/2007Nov/0062.html > > > > note that i have posted this to wai-xtech as it pertains to the work > > of several WAI WGs > > > > gregory. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > > CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, > > as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them > > with others. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > > Gregory J. Rosmaita, oedipus@hicom.net > > Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/index.html > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- ------- End of Original Message -------
Received on Tuesday, 20 November 2007 20:55:41 UTC