Quiz: Speaking forms labels - part 4
Recently, Bruce Lawson talked about receiving a copy of his new book, a collaboration with a number of well known names in the accessibility field:
Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance by Andrew Kirkpatrick, Bruce Lawson, Richard Rutter, Christian Heilman, Jim Tatcher and Cynthia Waddell. While engaging in a bit of unwarranted self-flagellation, Bruce mentioned an “Accessibility Old Wives Tale” that I thought still worth exploring. Bruce says:
…in the introduction I commit a cardinal sin that I only recently berated Andy Budd for:
One of my biggest bugbears, the Accessibility Old Wives’ Tale™, is to be found on page 130: “.. many screenreaders will ignore text between form elements, unless they are enclosed in a label.” So, which screenreaders are those? … So this is a plea to all authors, not just Budd: if you make statements like “some browsers” or “many screenreaders”, please identify the culprits.
I believe this is really a problem of modality. In straight through reading mode, one probably hears everything spoken. Then, in forms interaction mode, only field labels are spoken. Let’s find out. Please try a very simple test case and let us know if the extra paragraph between the form fields is spoken while you are interacting with the form. Since we’re trying to be more precise that “many screenreaders,” make sure you tell us which reader and version.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:53 am
This is pretty much as I expected from JAWS, but I tested the page using JAWS 7.10.
Using with Firefox 1.5.0.6:
Reading the page by skipping through in Virtual Cursor reading mode with the down arrow, JAWS reads out the input labels, the edit boxes and the paragraph between the two inputs.
JAWS reads through the first paragraph, then reads the label on the first input before continuing onto the form field when you press the down arrow to continue reading. Weirdly, when you go on to read through the extra paragraph between the two inputs, JAWS reads out the first word of the second input label as part of the extra paragraph: “… for the next field. Second.” and then continues reading “field input” as the label (without the word “Second”) and then continues on to the second edit box. A little bug there (with Firefox at least - see below).
If you hit the form and enter forms mode, type something and then hit Tab to go to the next form control (just like tabbing through controls on the page in Virtual Cursor reading mode) you skip the extra paragraph in the form and go straight to the second input field.
However, if you enter the first input field, type something and then leave Forms Mode (hit the plus key on the number pad) and press the down arrow to continue reading, JAWS will read out the extra paragraph (as you are back in reading mode). I can see that some users may not know how to exit Forms Mode, or are not informed that they may need to do so.
JAWS 7.10 with Internet Explorer 6 (IE6):
With IE6, JAWS behaves the same way except that it does not exhibit the same bug as Firefox does in reading out the first word of the second label at the end of the paragraph located within the form.
September 12th, 2006 at 10:58 am
I thought I’d report that I have been informed that the issue with the first word of the label text being read out incorrectly will be fixed in the upcoming version of JAWS.
September 15th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Jon,
Thanks for the tests and the good news about the label reading bug. Glad to hear a fix is near.