> On Aug 4, 2015, at 19:03, Rick Lecoat <li...@sharkattack.co.uk> wrote: > > Jim Thatcher (who, it might be supposed, knows a thing or two about > accessibility) is of the view that there is almost no reason to make hidden > content available to screenreaders: > http://alistapart.com/comments/now-you-see-me#330917 > > And in fact this returns to a question I've sought an answer to on previous > occasions but never got a definitive answer to: Do people using screenreaders > (I'm going to just refer to them as 'blind users' for the sake of brevity, > although I realise that it's a far broader church than that) WANT to have > immediate access to content that is hidden by interface -- eg. in > javascript-powered tabs, or in an accordion -- or would they rather that it > is hidden until their screenreader makes it available? Marco Zehe, in this > article: > https://www.marcozehe.de/2012/04/24/hiding-content-untangled-hiding-vs-moving-out-of-the-visible-viewport/ > seems to imply the latter, but is he the only one?
Nope, Marco is right (and Jim). If you hide something, hide it for everybody. Use the whole machinery provided by aria-* attributes to clarify & improve the experience for AT users. That might require using bits of JS to toggle attribute values, but AT users will have a much better experience. After all, what is “noise” on a page to a visual user (until it is needed), is equally ( or even more so) “noise” to an AT user. And even Jim Thatcher’s examples that could be left visible to AT users only should, imho, benefit from using aria attributes instead. Bear in mind that he wrote that comment 4 years ago; support of aria has improved immensely since then. And —cela va de soi— there are always exceptions that confirm the rule :-) Philippe -- Philippe Wittenbergh http://l-c-n.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
