NYCPHP Meetup

[csnyder]

On 2/14/07, Chris Shiflett <shiflett at php.net> wrote:
> Tedd Sperling wrote:
> > > Can you explain what a screen reader would do with this?
> > >
> > > <h2>Please click the accessibility icon.</h2>
> > > <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" name="movie"
> > > data="access.swf" style="width: 30px; height: 30px;">
> > > <param name="movie" value="access.swf">
> > > </object>
> >
> > No, I can't explain what a screen reader would do with it. However,
> > if someone could explain to me what a screen-reader/user combination
> > expects, then I probably can write the code.
>
> Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to be facetious. I'm curious.

I'll take a stab at this. A screen reader wouldn't do squat with it,
because it's including a Flash movie and (correct me if I'm wrong) the
screen reader only has access to the text it is given by the browser
from the DOM.

So it's going to say something like "Page has twenty links. Heading
level two. Please click the accessibility icon." And that's it, unless
the Flash movie dynamically modifies the text of the page.

Now, the movie might try to play sounds to explain itself to a
visually impaired user. But unless the entire form is rendered in the
Flash movie, its going to conflict or be out of sequence with the
reader reading the rest of the page.

The movie could dynamically insert a line of text into the form: "Type
ctrl-a to play a short sound. You must type the word you hear into the
field marked i underscore am underscore human in order to submit this
form."

Firefox once again comes to your rescue, because there is a nifty
extension called "Fangs" that emulates the very expensive JAWS screen
reader. It doesn't speak the text, but it renders it in a window the
way it will be spoken, so you can get some idea of how your pages
"look" to people who can't see them.

Are you coding this for clients who are, or actually know, blind
people? I'm pretty sure we (collective we) have no chance of ever
getting this stuff right until we can watch someone actually trying to
use web applications via JAWS.

-- 
Chris Snyder
http://chxo.com/