Jaws and the Generic Lightbox Demo

[Michael S Elledge]

Hi Jonathan--

I would second your comment about having an instructions or help mode 
for persons using assistive technology. We're working on a project where 
a client is using several third party applications that aren't terribly 
consistent in their operations (a less than ideal situation to be sure) 
and have recommended accessibility information links at the point of 
initiation to alert users, along with an link on the main navigation bar 
that summarizes what lies ahead.

I'm not sure if there is a conventional way of identifying contextual 
accessibility information--maybe all that's needed is the "i" logo, with 
it being identified as "Accessibility Information" in alt text and a 
title tag, or a help icon with similar treatment. Do you think one or 
the other would be better?

I guess this also raises the possibility of Fluid creating a special 
icon for accessibility instructions if that's a road we want to go down, 
although there seems to be a proliferation of symbols out there already 
for other things that adds to clutter.

Of course, having all the components behave consistently with respect to 
keystrokes and functionality offers the greatest potential for improving 
user experience. Maybe we should put together a table that summarizes 
the keys, commands and functionality for the Fluid components?

Mike


Jonathan Hung wrote:
> As far as I know, there's no way of detecting whether or not a certain 
> AT is being run. If this were possible, we wouldn't have to try to 
> figure out good key combinations that work with major ATs like 
> WindowEyes and JAWS.
>
> This is why we have to mention both instructions (CTRL+Direction key, 
> and CTRL+J/I/K/M) since we don't know if a user is using an AT or not.
>
> Your #3 point is very good. I think the instructions should be easily 
> and quickly accessible to the user. I'm a big fan of instructions or 
> help mode especially for AT users who don't necessarily have the 
> visual cues to deduce functionality. We should probably check to see 
> that all our other components have similar help text / instructions 
> easily accessible to an AT like JAWS.
>
> - Jonathan.
>
> ---
> Jonathan Hung / jonathan.hung at utoronto.ca 
> <mailto:jonathan.hung at utoronto.ca>
> University of Toronto - ATRC
> Tel: (416) 946-3002
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 4:35 PM, Justin <justin.obara at utoronto.ca 
> <mailto:justin.obara at utoronto.ca>> wrote:
>
>     I'm still very new to using Jaws. I'm trying to learn and understand
>     not only how the software works, but how a typical user would make use
>     of it.
>
>     I was testing it on the generic lightbox example
>     (http://build.fluidproject.org/fluid/sample-code/reorderer/generic-lightbox/generic-lightbox.html
>     ) and a few things came to mind.
>
>     1) you  need to turn Browse Mode off to use keyboard drag and drop,
>     this isn't in the keyboard instructions.
>
>     2) For Jaws the 'ctrl + a direction key" movement doesn't work
>     properly, yet it is still mentioned to the user.
>
>     3) The user has to perform an additional tab after hearing the
>     instructions, in order to perform drag and drop, but isn't told this.
>
>     Would it be possible to change the instructions so that the person
>     using jaws does not hear the written instructions, but a specific
>     message that includes the necessary information (as mentioned in the
>     points above)?
>
>     Would a typical Jaws user need these instructions (points above)?
>
>     Any help would be appreciated.
>
>     Thanks
>     Justin
>
>
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