[Websg Meetup] Report: An accessible talking customer comment form for children: A specimen accessible Flash application

[Yuhui]

I read something about this topic in various articles previously.
Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read them. :P

Flash - Adobe is working on accessibility, but don't expect anything overnight.
AJAX - IBM is working on improving accessibility and will publish its
findings/documentation. Again, don't expect anything overnight.

So it looks like the heavyweight companies are working on this aspect.
I expect that Google is also working on AJAX accessibility since they
use AJAX in all of their apps and they're supposed to "do no evil".

> From: draco <kodeiko at gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:51:00 +0800
>
> Thank you Divya for correcting me on this one. I did a little test
> with JAWS 8.0 and had no luck whatsoever with (on-click) generated
> contents with ajax. Seems like there isn't a way to notify the screen
> readers of on-screen changes just yet; tried a little focus() trick
> but no, no luck again.
>
> Using JSON:
>
> Generated text taking place on window.onload seems to produce
> inconsistent results. JSON objects from twitter retrieved to be listed
> in a unordered list sometimes get read out, and sometimes it's the
> hidden text, whichever loads first when JAWS starts reading.
>
> Changing the onload behavior to only retrieving onclick returns worse
> result. JAWS remains  unnotified of screen changes as expected.
>
> (http://draco.devsync.net/lab/jscript/multiple-twits/ YMMV)
>
> AJAX:
>
> I tried using AJAX (yes, xmlhttprequest and xml this time), JAWS would
> not even read out the list of shout-outs retrieved on window.onload. I
> couldn't be bothered to try out onclick as I did not have time to play
> around but this is what I found out in an hour of trial and error in
> win/firefox 2.0.2. (damn JAWS free 40mins mode though)
>
> Granted, these may not be new to some of you but I hope it helps if at
> all. Well as you can see, I'm still learning. ;-) If there's any
> relevant information, I'll be looking forward to more.
>
> Some articles I found:
> http://juicystudio.com/article/improving-ajax-applications-for-jaws-users.php
> http://juicystudio.com/article/making-ajax-work-with-screen-readers.php
>
> On 3/18/07, divya manian <divya.manian at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/18/07, draco <kodeiko at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > And AJAX-based contents can still be accessible if implemented
> > > properly. (ie: javascript built on top of already accessible web
> > > pages) :-)
> >
> > Not really, if you have content that gets generated only when clicked
> > through javascript - i wonder how that content can be detected by screen
> > readers. Unless you mean using javascript to hide or
> > show already existing content on the page
> > (which wouldnt be ajax).
> >
> > > On 3/18/07, Ronnie Liew <ronnieliew at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > As much as I would love to use flash for every development that I do,
> > > > I have to admit that Flash does have issues with accessibility. I am
> > > > not an expert with the various criteria for something to be deem
> > > > accessible but common application (for the disabled) like JAWS screen
> > > > reader will not be able to read content within Flash. In the same
> > > > note, AJAX-based content will probably fail too.
> > > >
> > > > > Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:37:56 +0800
> > > > > From: "Ivan Chew" <ramblinglibrarian at gmail.com>
> > > > >
> > > > > Not sure if I've shared this here before. Anyway, it was mentioned
> > > > > about how Flash isn't Wed Standards Compliant. Some of you might find
> > > > > this report of use. I'm just looking at the report from the angle of
> > > > > library services to the disabled. Thought I'd get the "Web Standards"
> > > > > perspective from the folks here. Thanks
[snip]

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