Re: [orca-list] bug in orca, firefox or in my html file

[Joanmarie Diggs <joanmarie diggs gmail com>]

Hi JosÃ.

The short answer, should you not be interested in the gory details of
Orca's support for form fields, is this: I have opened an enhancement
request against Orca (bug 592724): "Presentation of the title attribute
in Web content should be a user-configurable option."

The long answer (emphasis on long. You've been warned. <grin>) is that
this is the end result of several things coming together:

1. Label guessing

Most content creators do not label their form fields correctly using
<label></label>. This means screen readers are put in the position of
having to try to guess a label so that given something like:

    Phone: <input type="text" />

We say "Phone: text" and not just "text" when the item gets focus.

As a sighted user, the reason I know what I'm expected to enter in the
columns in your example (Date, Time, etc.) is because you've put
functional labels at the top of each column. Orca's label guessing code
is on the lookout for grids with functional labels at the top. That's
why we're picking up "Date" and "Time" and the rest as labels.

2. The use of the title attribute in the wild

Many browsers present the contents of the title attribute as a tooltip
which appears when the user hovers the mouse over the object in
question. Content creators seem to like this and have been using the
title attribute as a way to provide additional information and/or a
description to the user who is about to click on the field. As a result
we sometimes see things like:

   Phone: <input type="text" title="Only U.S. numbers please." />

Or worse:

   Phone: <input type="text" title="Please enter your number in the 
   form (123)555-1212. We're sorry, but due to federal regulations
   beyond our control, ACME Corporation is not able to provide services
   to users outside of the U.S." />

How should we present this field to the user? Should we say, "Phone:
text"? Or should we say "Only U.S. numbers please. text."? (Or "Please
enter your number in the form .... blah, blah, blah... text."?)

We opted for the former. The reasoning is this: Content creators are
assuming sighted users who will see the functional label first (Phone,
Date, Time) and only see the tooltip if and when they move the mouse to
click on that object when they are ready to enter information. In other
words, the thing on the screen serves as the label. Therefore, when a
field does not have a <label></label> associated with it and we are
forced to guess, we prefer what's on the screen.

3. We don't guess the label for non-focused items.

There are several reasons for this:

a. As mentioned above, most form fields lack proper labels. In addition,
most form fields have functional labels on the same line. Therefore,
when presenting the line the odds are quite good that we'll be
presenting the functional label anyway and we don't want to
double-present that functional label (i.e. once from guessing it and
once because it's on the line we're presenting).

b. Guessing a label can be a lot of work. If we were to attempt to guess
the label for a line full of unlabeled fields, the performance hit would
be painful.

c. We've always tried to present lines as they appear on the screen so
that you as an Orca user are seeing what I as a sighted user am seeing.

4. Gecko exposes the title attribute as the name of the object.

I often wish it didn't, but it does.... <shrugs> When the speech and
braille generators are called upon to present an object, one of the
things they present is the name of the object, should the object have a
name. We don't do this when the object has focus (i.e. when you're
Tabbing) because for focused objects we present the label or the name
and if we are able to guess the label we pass on getting the name.

Phew! Undoubtedly that was more than you ever wanted to know about what
Orca is up to when you're accessing a form. <smile> Hopefully it was of
some use. As I stated at the beginning of this message, whether or not
we present the title attribute should be user-configurable. We'll try to
get something implemented sufficiently early in the 2.29 cycle that you
all can experiment with it and give us feedback.

Take care.
--joanie 

On Thu, 2009-08-20 at 23:27 -0300, jose vilmar estacio de souza wrote:
> Hi all,
> I don't know if this is a problem in firefox, orca, or a problem caused 
> by a bad html.
> To reproduce try the following steps:
> 1. open the attached html file.
>
> 2. press tab     many times so that you will cycle in all fields. Pay 
> attention in the labels announced by orca for the fields. You should 
> hear labels like:
> date, time, history and etc.
>
> 3. press ctrl+home and scroll in the text  using the down key.
> Instead of hear date, time and etc, you will hear date (line 1) time 
> (line 1) date (line 2) time (line 2) and etc.
>
> They are values of the title attribute of each field.
>
> My question is:
> Why they are not announced when cycling in the fields with the tab key?
>
> Can I change something in the html so that the title attribute can be 
> announced?
> Thanks.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Orca-list mailing list
> Orca-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Visit http://live.gnome.org/Orca for more information on Orca.
> The manual is at http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-access-guide/nightly/ats-2.html
> The FAQ is at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions
> Netiquette Guidelines are at http://live.gnome.org/Orca/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/NetiquetteGuidelines