culann.com

Interesting 508 Issue

Web-Graphics has an interesting post this morning on
how the requirements of Section 508 interact with web-based applications. Both the original post and the comments raise excellent questions, to which I’d like to add one or two of my own.

In a rich web-based app used under normal conditions, dynamically shown/hidden/created rows are easily noticed (”Hey, the screen moved!”). Normal conditions also allow the designer/developer to draw attention to the results of dynamic operations with visual cues such as color and size, but all of this is only possible because the page under normal conditions (forgive me for the constant reiteration of that qualification; its significance will become more apparent in a moment) presents all its content more or less simultaneously. To a sighted user, everything on a page is pretty much equally available at all times.

Contrast this with the way in which a screen-reader presents a page; the difference is between seeing everything at once and hearing one piece at a time - between simultaneous access to all content and sequential access to the next piece of content. If a web-based application is being accessed through a screen-reader, the user is led through the page a piece at a time.

So here’s the problem: under normal conditions, the user has immediate access to the fact that something’s changed (be it by the motion of the page, color, or whatever) in virtue of her ability to perceive the page as a whole all at once. There doesn’t seem to be a comparable way for a screen-reader user to get the same sort of immediate access to the fact of a change, given that her experience of the page is so much more constrained.

* I know next to nothing about screen-reader technology; perhaps there’s a way to use voice tone, timbre, perceived location, or some other attribute to draw attention to the results of a dynamic process. Nevertheless, it seems like there’s a huge can of worms here just asking to be opened…