WAI-ARIA, IE7, and JAWS

Question

One of the projects I am currently working on has customer requirements for IE7 and 508 compliance. This customer currently uses JAWS version 9 and is making requests which I am told are impossible without a newer version of JAWS which supports WAI-ARIA. For example:

1. Accessible, 508 compliant Ajax Loading Indicator
2. Accessible, 508 compliant Ajax Pagination

Before I come back and tell them that they need to upgrade to a newer version of JAWS (from Freedom Scientific's website, WAI-ARIA is supported starting with version 10), I would like to be armed with as much information as possible to make a convincing argument. First of all, is IE7 capable of conveying ARIA information to JAWS (I've seen claims of ARIA support starting with IE8, but nothing explicitly stating it doesn't work with IE7)? If so, is it only to a limited extent? Supposing the answer to this question is yes and the degree of support is sufficient, are there big differences in support between JAWS versions 10, 11, and 12 which I should know about? Perhaps this will is a good bar to meet: given the requirement for IE7, what is the minimum version of JAWS required to apply ARIA in order to solve the two questions linked above.

I know there are a lot of questions jammed in here, but I believe they worked together as a single question: please give me an overview of the varying degrees of support for WAI-ARIA between IE7 and different versions of JAWS; and to what extent can these solve the customer requests linked above.

Thanks! And even if you can't address all of the elements of this question, I would be grateful for any information you can share.

Lathe

Answer 1

You seem to be equating 508 compliance with support for WAI-ARIA? AFAIK 508 doesn't dictate the use of ARIA.

While ARIA has been designed to overcome the many difficulties of making dynamic web apps accessible, some old hacks that it's designed to replace still more or less work. Also because it is a relatively new technology there is limited support in anything but the latest browsers/Assistive tech.

To have an AJAX progress indicator and pagination accessible with-out ARIA is not straightforward but usually you can get it working one way or another by forcing Focus to the updated parts of the page and using hidden (off-left) text to give screen reader users some verbal directions or hints. The trick being this has to be done is such a way that JAWS will go back and reload it's DOM rather that it's cached version of the page. JAWS 9 is better at this than previous versions.

If you google around you should be able to find various ways to do this.

My adice to you is hire an Accessibility Consultant for a couple of sessions otherwise you are going to be stumbling around in the dark, they'll also be able help you talk to your client and suggest Design changes if it is all looking too complicated to be done in an accessible way.

"First of all, is IE7 capable of conveying ARIA information to JAWS".. etc

Browsers don't send ARIA information directly to JAWS, they notify the accessibility layer of Operating System which just interpret the messages as standard operating system accessibility messages. The Assistive technology (JAWS or whatever) are just (hopefully) listening for these system messages.

Ambrose

Thanks for your answer @Chris. My project manager is indeed requesting that we hire an Accessibility expert full time (most of our client's require 508 compliance, and it's really surprising we've gotten along without some serious skill in this area so far). – Lathe

Regarding making an accessible AJAX progress indicator (for starters), I googled my best and couldn't find any solutions. I've had success using off-screen text for hints within static reading, but haven't been able to focus on text mid-ajax call. If you could point me to some good resources, or even go back and answer those linked questions, that would be awesome. – Lathe

As a matter of fact, I've been astonished by how little quality information there is out there for creating accessible applications (whether it be web-based or Swing in particular). Indeed, a lot of resources I've come across describe techniques which don't actually work in practice: it's often clear the author has not actually tested their ideas using screen readers and rather imagined adding a tooltip hear and a tooltip there would magically make everything better. – Lathe

@Stephen I found a few links todo with Focus.. is.gd/i19Pr , is.gd/i19Tp , is.gd/i19Hh . Hope they help, just remember it's a hack! Also you need to watch the timing -- you have to make sure the content is finished loading before you force focus. – Ambrose

@Stephen .. also A List Apart has just published a couple of good articles on ARIA. alistapart.com/issues/319 – Ambrose

Answer 2

I can’t speak to Chris Bentley’s suggestion of using off screen text to provide hints to screen readers. While I assume this would work I’ve never seen it done on a website. I’ve also never dealt with internal apps designed to be 508 compliant and have next to no web development experience. I second Chris’ suggestion of hiring a consultant who has experience in this area. I don’t know what the differences are between Jaws versions and WAI-ARIA support. I know Jaws 10 does at least offer some WAI-ARIA support under Internet Explorer 7. I just went to http://news.yahoo.com with Jaws 10 and was able to use the ; key to move from landmark to landmark. You can run multiple versions of Jaws without a problem on the same machine, I currently have Jaws 10, 11, and 12 installed. This should allow you to test different versions of Jaws if you can't find documentation that spells out the differences.

Finegrained

Hi @Jarad. Per your suggestion on an earlier answer to one of my questions, I did try to install JAWS 10 side-by-side with JAWS 9 but had some issues: the JAWS 10 install did not place any icons in my start menu or on my desktop, I went to the Freedom Scientific folder and it did not appear in a structure similar to the JAWS 9 install, I found some executable that looked like it was JAWS 10 and ran it, but it acted bizarrely including causing my browser to crash and even forcing my computer to restart without notice! – Lathe

I have 10, 11, and 12 installed on the same computer. I'll try installing 9 along with 11 in a virtual machine tomorrow and let you know my results. – Finegrained

Answer 3

WAI-ARIA support is available starting in IE8 and Firefox 2+. Concerning screenreaders, use NVDA instead of JAWS. It's free and works great with Firefox. In fact, the Mozilla foundation has granted funding to NVDA to improve the NVDA screen reader. They work great together.

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