AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work?

[ArticleBot]

This is an article discussion thread for discussing the SitePoint article, "AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work?"

[Martic]

Great article, nice job I love your stuff.

[Matt_Machell]

Nice to see some thorough examination of this subject. It's not something that gets enough analysis.

[redux]

good stuff.

[Div By Zero]

Great article on a really interesting subject ! great work guys :)

Excellent! I've been looking for reasearch into this matter. I have always suspect AJAX to cause problems of this type and have avoided using it because of that. I'm sticking with individual page requests.

I suspected as much, but am saddened to see my suspicions confirmed. Ajax is just too much of a lovely shiny thing for people to stop using it, so I worry about more inaccessible sites being produced.

Hats off to brothercake for the methodical research.

[Buddy Bradley]

Finally an answer to all those questions about how screenreaders handle Ajax responses!

I wonder whether an alternative to asking SR users to switch off Javascript would be a simple question or checkbox to indicate they are SR users, and then either don't use JS or switch the response method to use alerts (which seems the most reliable method of the ones you tried).

[Martic]

I enjoy these type of articles. Thank you.

Good article. It's clear a lot of work went into it. I'm sympathetic to the needs of visually impaired users, but sympathy to a small segment of users won't stop developers from advancing the state of the art in interface design. Nor should it. If things are going to get better for these disabled users I think the burden has to fall on the vendors of screen reader software. To be honest, I think they've become too complacent with what is, in effect, a captive audience for their products. It's time for them to serve their customers the same way that the rest of us take for granted with our web browsers. And maybe it's time for a concerted effort to develop a free, more reliable, and standards-based open source alternative.

[brothercake]

@Buddy - absolutely, yes. Some kind of option that explains the difference between the two choices of interface, notes which kinds of devices most likely suit which interface, and then ask the user to make and record a choice.

With that information we can build application pages accordingly - if a user has selected the AJAX interface, we give it to them, but if they've selected a POST/response interface then we don't add any script includes at all.

[Majglow]

This was quite an interesting article and answered a lot of questions.

However, these leaves the question slightly addressed towards the end of the article. Unless one has a good reason, why try to make applications accessible? How big of a market share does the group consisting of people using screenreaders to browse the internet have? Even making a JS disabled version of the application seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for development groups with low resources. Judging from the statistics gathered on the collection of sites I run that don't have any AJAX or anything fancy, 98%+ of the users would be able to browse AJAX enabled sites.

If I had an extra $x to devote to development, wouldn't it make more sense to spend it make more revenue from the 98% group than from the tiny 2%?

[Paul_C]

Originally Posted by Majglow

If I had an extra $x to devote to development, wouldn't it make more sense to spend it make more revenue from the 98% group than from the tiny 2%?

What's most cost effective isn't always what's right. Whether one or the other makes more sense (or cents) depends on your values.

[JVLB]

Perhaps I overlooked something, but do screen readers expose their existence to JavaScript? If so, that might present potential opportunities for the remediation of some accessibility issues; if not it would seem a glaring (and easily rectified) omission in screen reader design.

[Majglow]

Originally Posted by Paul_C

What's most cost effective isn't always what's right. Whether one or the other makes more sense (or cents) depends on your values.

The reality is that business make decisions based on money. I think you'd have some trouble selling "Because it's right" to your boss when you ask for a whole lot more money to make the site accessible to screen readers.

Bingo. I'm all for accessibility, but unless the project/site/what-have-you is geared towards a screen reader using audience...

It would be nice to see some stats on the usage of screen readers. What % of the browsing public do they comprise? What is the market share between the various players in the screen reader market?

I wouldn't be surprised if the #s dictated that hacking for IE5 would support more visitors.

Thats true but from a legal point of view you are discriminating against disabled people if you dont offer an equivalent service and cutting off 10% of your potential 'buyers'

[Buddy Bradley]

Originally Posted by JVLB

Perhaps I overlooked something, but do screen readers expose their existence to JavaScript?

AFAIK they don't. They sit 'on top' of a browser such as IE; so IE would render the page, including any Javascript behaviour, and then the screenreader picks up the output.

The JS is therefore not aware of the screenreader's existence.

(I'm sure redux can correct me if that's wrong, but I think I got it off him in the first place )

[Wombert]

Awesome article, thanks James!

Majglow, the counter argument to that is that from a monetary point of view, it makes sense for businesses to make their site work for *everyone*. We, people with disabilities, have money, spend it, tell our friends and famillies about good shopping experiences, etc. So, not just a pool of, say, ~20% of the US population, but all our famillies and friends to... Just food for thoughts.

[foofoonet]

Well lets imagine we have to create a SR friendly version becuase the law says we have to, and its the right and responsible thing to do...

So, is there a way of detecting that a SR is viewing the page?

(no JS is quite simple, create a noscript-ed hyperlink... I guess)

Is it back to browser sniffers to redirect to the POST (non-AJAX) version?

Nice article BTW

[omnicity]

To me the conclusion of this article that AJAX does not change anything. Since AJAX is dependant on JavaScript, we have to stick with: "Only use JavaScript for embellishments, not for core functionality." I could not see anything in this article that had anything to do with AJAX itself, just problems that are already known about with DHTML. There are probably ways of using AJAX that do not update the display in this way, and they are probably okay. For example, Google Suggest barely uses the DOM at all, and only as an enhancement to the basic service, so (in my opinion) does not cause a problem.

[JVLB]

Perhaps testing for the implementation of the CSS property "speak" through either the implementation property or the supports() method would offer some utility, though some ambiguity would remain as to whether the particular user was actually using the functionality.

On a more hopeful note, from what I've read about the HTML 5 initiative, it may offer some relief in the future. Then again, maybe coding for Lynx is the answer.

[Majglow]

Originally Posted by Xris_s

Thats true but from a legal point of view you are discriminating against disabled people if you dont offer an equivalent service and cutting off 10% of your potential 'buyers'

I hardly think there are any laws governing accessibility issues with websites. It would be quite hard edging on impossible to write laws dictacting how websites should be designed. Also, I have a feeling that the 10% figure is just made up :P

Originally Posted by Nic

Majglow, the counter argument to that is that from a monetary point of view, it makes sense for businesses to make their site work for *everyone*. We, people with disabilities, have money, spend it, tell our friends and famillies about good shopping experiences, etc. So, not just a pool of, say, ~20% of the US population, but all our famillies and friends to... Just food for thoughts.

Do you have any backing for the 20%? I'm actually quite interested in finding numbers regarding this. It would help me a lot to make decisions in the future.

The only numbers I could find don't really say that much. There are about 5 million people who are considered legally blind. However, I knew somebody who was legally blind yet could see fine with his prescription glasses. He could use the internet just fine like anybody else (as long as he wore the glasses).

Then, I found a statistic saying that only about 3% of people with visual impairments in japan used the internet.

I know that making websites accessible to everyone is the morally right thing to do, but in reality, given budget limitations, it really come up that high on my list of priorities.

[Buddy Bradley]

Originally Posted by Majglow

I hardly think there are any laws governing accessibility issues with websites.

Yeah, what a bizarre concept that would be!

Are you for real?

Disability Discrimination Act (UK)
Section 508 (US)

I can't remember what the Aus legislation is called, but it's certainly there.