anybody willing to test WAI-ARIA markup?

[jadelennox]

For Bug 820 (adding WAI-ARIA compatibility to dreamwidth), I've added some very minimal WAI-ARIA markup to a copy of the logged-in homepage. It's nothing complicated, nowhere near the richness that WAI-ARIA can deal with; just some labeling of areas and indicating drop-down menus.

I can see this new markup having a really nice effect using Dragon NaturallySpeaking plus Firefox 3 plus Mouseless Browsing, but I would love to know what the effect of this new markup is on people using other adaptive technology, especially screen readers. Would everyone here using adaptive technology or otherwise adapted computer interfaces be willing to take a look at two pages for me?

This is a copy of the logged-in homepage marked up with WAI-ARIA. For comparison, this is the exact same page without any of the WAI-ARIA markup.

Do they seem identical to you? Different? If they are different, what are the differences? Which one do you prefer? (And I suppose if you do this testing, let me know what configuration you are using: operating system; adaptive technology with a version number; browser with any particular adaptations; etc.)

Thank you all so much!

Comments

[not_a_sniglet]

Hello.

Other than what is pasted below the two pages appear the same to me. The configuration of this computer is Windows XPSP2, JAWS for Windows 9.0 and a copy of Mozilla Firefox 3.0 with a webvissum plugin that generally has no bearing on the look of pages.

The only difference in the Y aria page and the other I can see is that in the y aria page as opposed to having Read, Manage, Organize and explore it displays as

Create Post Entry Edit Entries Edit Profile
Upload Icons (152 of 200) Create Community Organize Manage Account Manage Circle
Manage Filters Manage Tags Manage Communities Import Content
Select Style Customize Style Read Reading Page Profile Feeds
Tags Recent Comments Inbox (28) Explore Directory Search
FAQ Shop Buy a Paid Account


And those are unlinked. I am assuming if it were our journal that was logged in those would become linked however.

Beyond that though, the pages are the same.

I am glad to be of assistance and if there is anything else I can ever help with, tell me.

Web vissum, in case you are unfamiliar with the plugin, and because I am not totally sure if it has no bearing on pages, can be found at http://www.webvissum.com

Haies

[jeshyr]

Thanks very much for this Haies. If you happen to know anybody who uses JAWS 10 and would be happy to take a look, would you point them over here too? I think it's just the newest JAWS that makes use of the landmarks.

Just incidentally it's spelt W A I - A R I A. The WAI stands for Web Accessibility Initiative, not sure about the ARIA part.

Cheers,
r

[pne]

it's spelt W A I - A R I A. The WAI stands for Web Accessibility Initiative, not sure about the ARIA part.

According to Wikipedia, it's "Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications".

[lightgetsin]

Apparently, Jaws does have some support for this -- I get "navigation landmark," and "search landmark" on various sensible places on the page. Also the word "menu" after links in the menu.

I can see the potential of this, definitely. Can't do much with it now, I don't think, but once I have increased control of the verbosity of this (it's vaguely annoying right now, in that 'extra babble on the page' way) and the ability to actually navigate by it, it could be awesome.

[lightgetsin]

O, Jaws 10.latest patch, is what I'm running, on IE 7. I'll give it a look with Firefox 3 later.

[jeshyr]

Thanks very much for this :)

[kyrielle]

I don't use any assistive stuff, but clicked links anyway because I was curious if I'd see any difference. And I do. If the only difference is the WAI-ARIA markup, shouldn't my experience be unaffected? I'm using Windows XP and Vista, using IE 7.

In contrast to the no-WAI-ARIA page, the WAI-ARIA page looks less polished and harder to read, with a number of small changes, which I think owes mostly to the fact (comparing the sources) that both seem to be nearly-identical HTML pages but the no-ARIA one is declared as XML.

[jeshyr]

Wow, good catch!

On Firefox 3/OS X they're indistinguishable except for ... *checks again* the underline on the large "jadelennox" username changes thickness marginally, and the width of the search box changes by a fraction.

I would never have noticed the change in declarations, I am thoroughly impressed :)

[kyrielle]

I saved them and diffed them to see if there was anything besides the WAI-ARIA to cause it, 'cause curiosity got the best of me. (And then failed to revise my first paragraph of reply, sigh.)

[mundens]

Not actually using an assistive browser at present, but the marked up page in Firefox 3 seems to be incorrectly allocating tool-tips one level lower down in the menu hierarchy than it should be.

In other words when you hover over the "Create" item, instead of "Create Menu" you get "Dreamwidth Account Functions" and when you hover over an individual menu item in the "Create" drop-down menu (such as "Edit Profile") you get "Create Menu" rather than the function you are hovering over.

I apologize in advance if this is how it's supposed to work, but the normal function of a tool-tip should be providing information about the function, rather than which menu it is a part of.

I'm guessing (and it's a pure guess as I know almost nothing about WAI-ARIA) looking at the source, that maybe the aria-labeledby="create_topnav" attribute on the class="*_subnav" tags should perhaps be aria-labeledby="create_subnav" and the aria-labeledby="create_topnav" attribute should be on the class="*_topnav" tags instead, etc.

[jeshyr]

Wow, I love having users who are so observant!! Thank you!