HTML5, ARIA Roles, and Screen Readers in March 2011
A new review for 2011 of current screen readers and how they behave in recent browsers with HTML5 section elements and related WAI-ARIA document and landmark roles. (April 1, 2011)
Research
Below you'll find some of the work I’ve pursued in my spare time.
Not All ARIA Widgets Deserve role="application"
There are currently some very useful examples of ARIA-enabled widgets out there that go a long way to helping us all implement ARIA as best we can while assistive technologies continue to improve their support for it. At the same time, there are few things about how some of these examples use the role="application" attribute and value, and how certain screen readers deal with it, that I think are worth exploring. (February 3, 2011)
VoiceOver and Tables with an Empty First Header Cell
VoiceOver 3 does not like the td element being used for the empty first cell of a header row in data tables. Use th instead, or explicitly apply thead and tbody elements. (October 5, 2010)
Title Attributes as Form Control Labels
A quick confirmation of screen reader support for the use of title attributes on form controls in place of actual label elements. (October 4, 2010)
Accessible ARIA Tabs
Some research and thoughts regarding WAI-ARIA-enabled tabbed interfaces and the way that a number of screen readers interact with them. (August 29, 2010)
In-Page Links and Input Focus [Again]
For reference, an overview of how current browsers and screen readers handle in-page links and update, or don’t update, keyboard input focus. (May 2010)
HTML5, ARIA Roles, and Screen Readers in May 2010
A look at the current state, as of May 2010, of four Windows screen readers’ support for basic HTML5 sectioning elements with and without the relevant ARIA landmark roles applied.
Variations on Ginader's [Awesome] Accessible Tabs
Inspired a year or so ago by Dirk Ginader’s very awesome Accessible Tabs plugin for jQuery, I did a little testing with some variations of it, mainly to try and solve a particular issue it was raising with JAWS 9 and 10 and Internet Explorer, but also just to understand what the plugin was actually doing and what else it might lead to. Now, in March 2010, after revisiting it some, I’ve finally published it.
JAWS, Window-Eyes and Character References
From March 2008, some research into how JAWS and Window-Eyes deal with various character references. The results are a little disappointing.
Various Test Cases
A collection of accessibility-related test cases.