On 14 Feb 2007, at 14:49:43, Nick Fitzsimons wrote:
On 15 Feb 2007, at 02:06:11, Michael MD wrote:
Do any screen readers support some kind of metadata or semantic
markup that could be used to embed such content in the page?
No, because screen readers never actually see the markup - they're
designed to work with Windows applications that support MSAA
(Microsoft Active Accessibility), not just browsers.
To follow myself up with some hard facts:
The page at <http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/browser/accessibility/
overview/invisible.asp> states that:
"With Internet Explorer 6 and later, the pvarState parameter of the
IAccessible::get_accState property receives STATE_SYSTEM_OFFSCREEN
when the object is invisible because of scrolling and receives
STATE_SYSTEM_INVISIBLE when the object is invisible because its
IHTMLStyle::visibility property is set to hidden, or its
IHTMLStyle::display property is set to none."
This means that using offscreen positioning is seen by the browser as
making an object invisible by scrolling - but as Windows (or at least
IE) doesn't support the concept of scrolling to a negative position,
it can't be seen. Screen readers apparently treat
STATE_SYSTEM_OFFSCREEN as meaning that the content of the object
should still be spoken - fairly obviously, as otherwise a wide or
tall page would only have its visible region spoken.
However, said screen readers treat STATE_SYSTEM_INVISIBLE as meaning
that the content of the object should not be spoken. Thus
"display:none" and "visibility:hidden" prevent the content from being
spoken.
More info is available at
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/browser/
accessibility/accessibility_node_entry.asp>
and in particular the article at
<https://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/browser/accessibility/overview/
overview.asp>
is definitely enlightening.
Cheers,
Nick.
--
Nick Fitzsimons
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/
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