[WSG] AJAX and accesibility
Hello, I'm trying to find out if there are any resources on AJAX and accesibility. It seems to me that if I would employ AJAX technologies on my site to enable a richer application experience, I would still need to code for non-JavaScript useragents . I also think that with screenreaders, lots of AJAX tricks would be hard to parse, even if such a reader would have JavaScript. Do these things hold true, and are there other things that I need to take into account? regards, Maarten Stolte ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility
http://www.standards-schmandards.com/index.php?2005/03/01/16-ajax-and-accessibility http://adactio.com/journal/display.php/20050308163812.xml - Original Message - From: Maarten Stolte [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 5:55 PM Subject: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility Hello, I'm trying to find out if there are any resources on AJAX and accesibility. It seems to me that if I would employ AJAX technologies on my site to enable a richer application experience, I would still need to code for non-JavaScript useragents . I also think that with screenreaders, lots of AJAX tricks would be hard to parse, even if such a reader would have JavaScript. Do these things hold true, and are there other things that I need to take into account? regards, Maarten Stolte ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility
Check out Derek Featherstone's follow-up to his talk at @media for some interesting viewpoints: http://www.boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2005/06/12/javascript-and-accessibility#more-72 1. You probably always have to do the back end stuff anyway, even if you can process lots of stuff that used to be back end on the client using AJAX -- what if your most important visitor has JS disabled or something (his firewall mabe?) breaks AJAX? 2. Some screenreaders DO detect JS-driven changes to the DOM (e.g. JAWS using IE) but I don't think it's definite what they see and what they don't and as far as AJAX is concerned it's early days :-) Just my 2p ... James On 6/29/05, Maarten Stolte [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I'm trying to find out if there are any resources on AJAX and accesibility. It seems to me that if I would employ AJAX technologies on my site to enable a richer application experience, I would still need to code for non-JavaScript useragents . I also think that with screenreaders, lots of AJAX tricks would be hard to parse, even if such a reader would have JavaScript. Do these things hold true, and are there other things that I need to take into account? regards, Maarten Stolte ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility
Hi, thanks for the replies, I'm reading the three articles now, and they seem very useful. regards, Maarten -Original Message- From: James Denholm-Price [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:21:01 +0100 Subject: Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility Check out Derek Featherstone's follow-up to his talk at @media for some interesting viewpoints: http://www.boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2005/06/12/javascript-and-accessibility#more-72 1. You probably always have to do the back end stuff anyway, even if you can process lots of stuff that used to be back end on the client using AJAX -- what if your most important visitor has JS disabled or something (his firewall mabe?) breaks AJAX? 2. Some screenreaders DO detect JS-driven changes to the DOM (e.g. JAWS using IE) but I don't think it's definite what they see and what they don't and as far as AJAX is concerned it's early days :-) Just my 2p ... James On 6/29/05, Maarten Stolte [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I'm trying to find out if there are any resources on AJAX and accesibility. It seems to me that if I would employ AJAX technologies on my site to enable a richer application experience, I would still need to code for non-JavaScript useragents . I also think that with screenreaders, lots of AJAX tricks would be hard to parse, even if such a reader would have JavaScript. Do these things hold true, and are there other things that I need to take into account? regards, Maarten Stolte ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility
After reading this post, I began thinking that the solution may be to seperate javascripts into basic and advanced sets. Just as we import advanced style sheets to avoid confusing early browsers, perhaps we can set an option to turn off advanced scripting. I could see the option acting much like a style sheet switcher that sets a cookie disabling advance.js but allows basic.js to set cookies, etc. This would allow the screen-reading visitor to view my site better without worrying about disabling functions in the next site by disabling javascript globally. It also would allow us to provide core functions and disable the layout based scripts. Are there any JavaScript people on this list that could comment? Ted -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Maarten Stolte Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 2:51 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Cc: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility Hi, thanks for the replies, I'm reading the three articles now, and they seem very useful. regards, Maarten -Original Message- From: James Denholm-Price [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:21:01 +0100 Subject: Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility Check out Derek Featherstone's follow-up to his talk at @media for some interesting viewpoints: http://www.boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2005/06/12/javascript-and-accessibili ty#more-72 1. You probably always have to do the back end stuff anyway, even if you can process lots of stuff that used to be back end on the client using AJAX -- what if your most important visitor has JS disabled or something (his firewall mabe?) breaks AJAX? 2. Some screenreaders DO detect JS-driven changes to the DOM (e.g. JAWS using IE) but I don't think it's definite what they see and what they don't and as far as AJAX is concerned it's early days :-) Just my 2p ... James On 6/29/05, Maarten Stolte [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I'm trying to find out if there are any resources on AJAX and accesibility. It seems to me that if I would employ AJAX technologies on my site to enable a richer application experience, I would still need to code for non-JavaScript useragents . I also think that with screenreaders, lots of AJAX tricks would be hard to parse, even if such a reader would have JavaScript. Do these things hold true, and are there other things that I need to take into account? regards, Maarten Stolte ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility
On 6/29/05, Drake, Ted C. wrote: re: http://www.boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2005/06/12/javascript-and- accessibility After reading this post, I began thinking that the solution may be to seperate javascripts into basic and advanced sets. Just as we import advanced style sheets to avoid confusing early browsers, perhaps we can set an option to turn off advanced scripting. snip / Are there any JavaScript people on this list that could comment? As both a JavaScript and an accessibility person, I'll step in for a moment. We (the WaSP Accessibility Task Force) will be looking at all possibilities in depth to determine what kind of scripting and techniques are to be considered safe to be used with screen readers and other assistive technology (we need best practices for dealing with screen magnifiers as well, and need a better understanding of the implications of AJAX type techniques for that group of people) In principle, I don't see anything wrong with a layered approach to JavaScript, much in the same way we layer style sheets. Once we better understand the finer points of the interaction between JavaScript and screen readers (for example), we could in theory determine which things will be safe, and then allow a preferences page to turn off specific portions of the JavaScript. I like your idea of allowing the user to turn off and on portions of the JavaScript via preferences - I don't usually advocate this approach on its own, but in this case, though, it is likely that if they disable JS completely, other sites will stop working as expected. Yes, I know - too bad for the other sites because it is their own fault in the first place. Erring on the side of caution though, a scripting preferences might be useful and less likely to cause other problems. There are a couple of tricky points that we'd need to sort out - directing people to preferences to make the change, ensuring that it is well explained without being too techie, and to avoid having too many options - in my opinion, it needs to be limited to all scripting, core only, and no scripting options - otherwise it gets too difficult to understand. Hope this helps - there are parts I'm being deliberately vague about as the Task Force is only just getting started and we have a lot of work to do... Please be reassured that we are looking at this very seriously with a very talented group of people, and hopefully we'll be making some good progress soon. Best regards, Derek. -- Derek Featherstone [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: 613-599-9784 1-866-932-4878 (toll-free in North America) Web Development: http://www.furtherahead.com Personal:http://www.boxofchocolates.ca ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
