Category: Geeks r Us
As many of you know, I love my coffee. But I also drink a substitute called Teeccino. It has no caffeine and is made of herbs. I usually buy it at a different store from the manufacturer because it's a bit cheaper. But today, I went to the manufacturer's website because I wanted to buy the 1 lb. cans, which only they sell, and because I wanted to see if they had any new products. But when I got to the site, it was an absolute nightmare! I've never seen anything like this in all my 14 years of working with the internet! Apparently, they now have weird submenus that act as links instead of as combo boxes. I could tab and use the arrow keys on them, but when I hit enter, they don't work. And I can't hit escape and get out of them because the second I hit tab, it brings me back to them. I tried it with NVDA, which is my normal reader, and then switched to JFW, thinking that it was just something that NVDA couldn't handle, but it did the same thing. It also made my browser act up so that I had to restart it. I'm using Firefox and XP Pro. i didn't try with Internet Explorer because I don't even like it on normal pages after version 6. In any case, could someone please try this page and tell me what's going on? If you're a programmer, I request that you look at the code and get technical here, because I want to write to Teeccino and explain the accessibility issues and it would be good if I could tell them why the site doesn't work with screen readers. I haven't tried it on the Mac but intend on doing so. Perhaps, it will work on one machine but not another. The link is here.
http://www.teeccino.com
Thanks for all the help.
At the risk of telling you something you don't wish to hear Tiff, I've just navigated this site perfectly fine using IE8 and Jaws 11. The moment I went to access it in Firefox though, it was as you say, a total disaster. So this would seem to be a Firefox issue rather than a screen reader one.
Dan.
Okay, now I'm really curious! If anyone here uses magnification software without a screen reader, how does Firefox behave with the site? I've never heard of a modern browser not being able to access a site if it wasn't related to a screen reader. If it works fine without one and with Firefox, then this is a very strange issue indeed! If not, then I should still write to them and let them know that Firefox can't handle their site, since many more people use that browser than use screen readers. Thanks for the help Dan.
Easy fix for you Tiff. Alt+T for tools. then Options, then go down to content and disable JavaScript. Suddenly it works just fine. I'd forgotten how fussy Firefox is with bloody JavaScript. That's one of the reason I don't use it because you have to keep altering that setting in order to get different sites working as desired, or indeed required. But disable JavaScript for that site and it'll work splendedly.
Dan.
Opa! Bravo re! Works. Thanks for the tip.
Well, the site itself is readable. But now it won't add anything to my cart. I'll hit "add to cart" on an item and I can tell that the page has switched, but it says 0 items at the top and says the ame when I go to check my cart.
Well, the add method is written in Java script, perhaps you can enable it right before you click add, and then disable it again, or you can try IE8, it is free after all.
Just write them and explain the issue, point out this site is definitely not in compliance with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, you can read about them at www.webaim.com for instance.
Thank you so much for the explanation and website. I'm sure this will be a real help when writing to them. *smile*