Can screen readers for the blind handle tabbed browsing?

Question

I am working on a site that has a lot of content that is displayed by clicking on tabs. Does anyone know if this is Section 508 compliant (specifically for blind users with a screen reader)? My main concern is that a screen reader might have trouble with the javascript that is used to manage the tabs and what they display.

I am using jQuery UI's tabs. If you look at the documentation/example you can see exactly how it is implemented.

Welker

I have no experience with it myself, but this movie on accessibility on the Yahoo homepage has encouraged me that almost anything could be made accessible, if you just work at it. – Exuberance

Answer 1

See Tabs support in the jQuery Accessible RIA - it does a good job of adding accessibility features to the basic jQuery UI tabs. Try using this extended package, and make sure you try using your site with popular speech recognition and screenreading software to validate that it's convenient and reads content at the correct, expected time.

Incertitude