[Irl-dean] Developing accessible ajax on web pages

[Joshue O Connor]

Hi Tim,

> The type of feature  is  the ability to right click  contacts  or mails   in
> a  web mail   client.  Right clicking brings up a  menu   containing
> things like   open mail,  add attachment  etc.

So it sounds to me that the ability to be able to bring up the menu that
is activated by the right click, via the keyboard, is what is needed
(presuming that the contacts and email etc are already accessible via
the keyboard). Off the top of my head - you may be able to do this by
attaching a simple  JS event such as onKeyPress (and you then ascribe a
certain key to call a function that brings up your menu). You may
however have to manipulating JS event handlers to simulate the right
click by creating a function that on a particular keypress will simulate
the right click event.  It sounds messy I know.

I have gathered some links together that I hope you find useful. Gez may
be able to help as he has mad skills in this area. If you keep it simple
then you should be OK, let me know how you get on and feel free to get
in touch off list if you are stuck.

Until HTML 5/XHTML 2 and the promise of their expanded semantics arrive,
WAI-ARIA is very promising effort to bridge the gap by using current
role and state semantics and grouping existing elements into Live Regions.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-aria-role-20060926/

For more on ARIA in a slightly more digestible format see the Mozilla site:

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Accessible_DHTML

Interesting article by James 'Brothercake' Edwards:

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/accessible-javascript

The right honourable Gez Lemon and Steve Faulkner and doing really good
work in the area as well so have a look at:

http://juicystudio.com/article/making-ajax-work-with-screen-readers.php

There a useful video tutorial on basic DOM scripting on Christian
Heilmans' site:

http://icant.co.uk/articles/domessentials/

as well as a transcript.

AJAX stuff may not always work and some of it may just never be
accessible but things are going to improve (as always) but I think
success or failure depends on the right approach.

Hope this helps.

Josh

********************************************************************

NOTICE: The information contained in this email and any attachments 
is confidential and may be privileged.  If you are not the intended 
recipient you should not use, disclose, distribute or copy any of 
the content of it or of any attachment; you are requested to notify 
the sender immediately of your receipt of the email and then to 
delete it and any attachments from your system.

NCBI endeavours to ensure that emails and any attachments generated 
by its staff are free from viruses or other contaminants.  However, 
it cannot accept any responsibility for any such which are 
transmitted.  We therefore recommend you scan all attachments.

Please note that the statements and views expressed in this email 
and any attachments are those of the author and do not necessarily 
represent the views of NCBI


********************************************************************