The Problem I noticed some interesting behaviour with VoiceOver 3 when working with data tables whose first cell in the first, or header, row is an empty td element. In these cases, VoiceOver does not correctly associate data cells with their proper column th header cells. Instead, VoiceOver seems to shift the header cells one column to the left, such… Continue reading VoiceOver and Tables with an Empty First Header Cell
Sometimes, often as a result of a web page’s layout or design, a label element cannot be used to identify a form control. Certainly, one can always use a visually hidden label, which is my preferred approach: you never know how the design might change in the future, at which point, if you’ve already got the label in the markup,… Continue reading Title Attributes as Form Control Labels
The WAI-ARIA specification remains unfinished and its implementation incomplete. All the same, some of it, e.g., landmark roles, can be used right now to improve the accessibility of web content and applications without causing a detrimental effect in older browsers or assistive technologies. I’m a big fan of WAI-ARIA, and think it is already a very useful collection of techniques… Continue reading Accessible ARIA Tabs
I recently rebuilt this site using WordPress 3.0, which was a lot of fun. Part of the fun was developing my own theme to try and make greater use of HTML5 and to improve accessibility. I did this by making changes to the various template files that come with the default Twenty Ten theme. One of the changes I made… Continue reading “Continue Reading” Links in WordPress
tabindex, Keyboard Focus and Some ARIA in Screen ReadersThese test cases are in no way comprehensive or robust: They should really be supplemented with examples using a greater variety of HTML5 elements and ARIA roles, but I just can’t be bothered at this point. Nonetheless, they reveal some interesting, if not slightly worrying, behaviour on the part of at least two screen readers. At least two things are… Continue reading tabindex, Keyboard Focus and Some ARIA in Screen Readers
Note: Updated research and results for March 2011. There are some good, helpful examples and work out there already showing how some screen readers deal with various HTML5 constructs and ARIA roles. I know the specs are not finished yet and assistive technology vendors are always working on it, but I wanted to play around a bit and confirm for… Continue reading HTML5, ARIA Roles, and Screen Readers in May 2010
Skip to Ginader’s Original Accessible Tabs Example Skip to the test cases Background Dirk Ginader’s Accessible Tabs jQuery plugin is just awesome. I love it. Providing straightforward, accessible solutions like this to such commonly used, and very often inaccessible, web interfaces is the way to go. The key to the plugin, as Ginader clearly explains, is ensuring that navigation takes… Continue reading Variations on Ginader’s [Awesome] Accessible Tabs
About the Tests These test results present the spoken output from JAWS, version 8.0, and Window-Eyes, version 6.1, when reading the 252 character references specified in HTML 4.01. Though JAWS 9.0 was not tested, I’m assuming, based on correspondence with Freedom Scientific, that its results would be identical with those of JAWS 8.0. Each screen reader was tested with default… Continue reading JAWS, Window-Eyes and Character References