Re: AJAX Accessible web page?

Hi Ken,

I've made some accessible Ajax widgets using Prototype and Scriptaculous.
I've searched for information about the most used Javascript libraries and of course I didn't hear something spectaculous about ARIA. ARIA is nothing for the moment, even it will be an excelent choice for the future blind web developers so for the moment I don't care about it.
I made some Javascript programs more than 10 years ago, but nothing until then, so I can say that I almost don't know anything about Javascript. Even in these conditions, I was able to use Scriptaculous (script.aculo.us) very easy. It is a high level library that uses the Prototype Javascript library.
I made a text field that displays a list of possible choices after the user types a certain (specified) number of chars, and if the user clicks or hits enter on one of those options, the text field is filled with that option.
I also made a simple text that if is clicked or if the user hits enter on it, it makes a form field to appear, with that text in it, and if the user changes the text from that form, the text from the web page changes with the text typed by the user. Of course, the text can be also stored on the server.
All these can be made with just a few lines of code, and they are very easy to do under Perl/Catalyst or Ruby/Ruby on Rails because these 2 frameworks have plugins for doing this very easy.
I didn't do more other things for the moment, because I've became interested in Ajax just for a few days
I've seen that it is also very easy to make sortable tables on the client side, in an accessible way, using MochiKit Javascript library.
If you want to create accessible Ajax widgets now, and not in the future, I recommend reading about the following Javascript libraries: 
Prototype
Scriptaculous
DOJO
MochiKit
YUI
ExtJS
These libraries are new and they tend to create accessible widgets, but those widgets still have an issue, because if the user don't know how to use the page that uses them, he might not know where he should hit an enter.
For example, the text that can be edited directly by hitting enter on it, doesn't tell that it is "Clickable". The programmer could put a "Click here to edit" text below it though.
And if the user is blind, he might type some letters on an edit field, but he won't see that a list of options appeared below the text field, and he won't also know that he can hit enter on one of them for filling the text field with it. Too good that this widget has a kind of bug (or a feature?), because after typing the first char in the text field, Jaws goes to forms mode off. After this moment, the user might type any number of chars, and the form will work normally, and this way the user is informed that this edit field can have a list of options to choose from below...
The table that can be sorted with a MochiKit code just puts a ^ char and a inverted exclamation point char after each column header for showing that after hitting enter on that header, the table will be sorted by that column from A to Z or from Z to A. 
But if the user doesn't know what those chars represent...


Octavian
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 7:03 PM
Subject: AJAX Accessible web page?
Has anyone made a truly accessible AJAX web page where it updates some kind 
of text on the screen lets say a calendar
and as it updates the main screen readers, Jaws, System Access, Window-eyes, 
and hal all read it when it updates?
If you have then please give me a reference to either a book or an example . 

Ken



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