Call for Feedback: WAI-ARIA based Accessibility-Library access.see.be

[Alexander Gewessler]

Hello together,
Gez Lemon gave me the hint to join this group and it seems to be the
right place for my concern.

I would appreciate your comments and critiques on my latest project
"access.see.be, WAI-ARIA based Accessibility-Library". I will review
and work over the library-code after a short time (maybe just 1-2
weeks) where I want to obtain as much feedback as possible. Beside I
am also working on a reference project with the aim to present the
possibilities of the library and especially - of course - WAI-ARIA.

You can find the library itself, demos, screencast and documentation
on www.access-see-be.net.
Feel free to comment here in this group or directly on the website!

Best regards,
Alexander

[Aaron Leventhal]

Hello,

It's great to have another WAI-ARIA widget set!

Here is my feedback so far:
1. Under screen reader support it talks about Firefox 2, which is an
older release. Firefox 2 users are are at this point, since automatic
updates went out. Also, there have been a ton of changes and
improvements in Firefox 3. The Firefox 2 codebase is actually based on
the older Firefox 1.5 Gecko engine, and is quite old. I highly recommend
just targetting Firefox 3+ at this point.
http://www.access-see-be.net/pages/screen-reader-support
2. Have you tried your examples with the JAWS 10 public betas? They have
made may improvements in ARIA support.
3. Have you tried your examples with all 3 modes in IE 8 beta 2?
4. On the tree view example I noticed that pressing down or up arrow
also scrolled the page. It's possible to avoid this by canceling the
event after you consume the keystroke. I suggest taking a look at this
doc:
http://wiki.codetalks.org/wiki/index.php/Docs/Keyboard_navigable_JS_widgets

- Aaron

[Aaron Leventhal]

One more thing...

I highly recommend trying your examples with NVDA and Orca -- two screen
readers that have great support for ARIA in Firefox.

- Aaron

On 10/20/2008 9:45 AM, Alexander Gewessler wrote:

[Alexander Gewessler]

Hi Aaron,
thanks for your feedback.

>> Here is my feedback so far:

1. I am aware of that my browser-screen reader combination is a bit
out of date. Currently I have some troubles with testing due system
problems (my prefered SR crashes with Firefox 3). But I am working on
this!
2. Not yet, but I will take time fopr a huge number of new tests, also
with the mentioned Orca and NVDA.
3. 3 modes - which/what do you mean? The "compatibility view"?
4. Thanks for the link. I already got a few "focus-specific"
responses, what seems most important in handling WAI-ARIA widgets. I
will take a careful look to these described best practices.

>> It's great to have another WAI-ARIA widget set!

What I forgot to mention: I declared the main aim under
www.access-see-be.net/2008/10/20/mission-statement.

Best regards,
Alexander