Re: jaws and mouse over links

  • From: "Tom Lange" <trlange@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 11:52:16 -0800

Hi,
You wrote:


greetings all james in denver is their a jaws keystroke to activate or be
able   to use mouse over i am on a page and if i just hit enter on a mouse

Here's what the JAWS help has to say about mouse over effects:

HTML allows the author of a page to set an OnMouseOver attribute for most HTML elements to run specified code such as JavaScript or Visual Basic Script when the mouse pointer is moved over the HTML element. Often this is used to momentarily display text, graphics, or links. JAWS now recognizes the OnMouseOver attribute, and if it is set to display text or links as part of the page, JAWS provides access to that information. Press INSERT+CTRL+ENTER to simulate moving the mouse pointer over the element at the Virtual Cursor location. If the mouse over event caused some part of the page to change, JAWS announces the line where the change occurred. To review the new content, you can press J to perform the Jump To Line command. Enter the number of the line that changed and press ENTER to move directly to that line. You can press SHIFT+J at any time to return to your previous location on the page.

Excuse me if I jump up on my soapbox for a second.
On a lot of pages, when I press insert+ctrl+enter on a MouseOver link, JAWS will inform me that it can't detect a change in content. I don't know if it's a JAWS problem or if the MouseOver element was improperly coded. I suspect the latter. Perhaps I'm a little cynical, but it seems to me that there's a hell of a lot of sloppy coding out there on the web, as well as outright misuse of certain types of elements, as in the case of the misuse of the header tag to emphasize text. I've used the Surf's Up series of pages to teach people how to deal with the web, and I've typically explained to people that the examples of such elements as MouseOvers reflect what should happen in a best-case scenario, but that people shouldn't be surprised if they get different results. The MouseOver is a classic case.
Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.
Tom

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