[thelist] Accessibility, Screen Readers and Progressive Enhancement.

[Bill Moseley]

I have a form with a country drop down list.  The vast majority of our
users are in the United States.  If the user selects United States
from the drop down we collect additional fields than with other
countries.

We use Javascript to display or hide fields based on the selected
country.

Without javascript we show all fields -- that is, on page load we hide
the fields and then once the country has been selected we show the
fields we need.  So, although there will be extra fields displayed,
the form still works without javascript.

One minor annoyance with javascript enabled is that when the page
first renders we see all the fields for a short amount of time.  We
use YUI and its onDOMReady() method to hide the fields.  Is there a
better (faster) way to use javascript to set the elements to
display:none before rendering?


Second, how will screen readers behave with this kind of setup?  Will
they not read the display:none fields?  What else should I keep in
mind about screen readers and this use of javascript?

Thanks,



-- 
Bill Moseley
moseley at hank.org
Sent from my iMutt