Website Accessibility for a JavaScript Scroller

[dj4uk]

I'm currently developing a new website and trying to get it to the highest level of accessibility W3C's WAI AAA.

I have a JavaScript scroller on one page that I need to ensure is accessible to everybody. Currently the majority of users will see a scrolling rows of images on screen. If a user has JavaScript disabled then this scroller gracefully becomes a scrolling div containing the images used in the scroller. If the user cannot view images then descriptions of all images in order are shown.

This is great but forgets one group - people who view websites normally through a well known browser but don't use a mouse (but still have JavaScript enabled). Therefore mouse events in JavaScript are useless. In my scroller control mouseover and mouseout events are used to track the direction the mouse is moving and therefore scroll in the direction desired.

To overcome this problem I have added a keyListener function which allows users to move the scroller using the arrow keys. However I am not 100% sure if the arrow keys play a vital part in keyboard navigation of a website and therefore if my scroller would interfere with this.

Basically should I use the arrow keys or choose other keys to manipulate the scroller?

DJ

[benihana]

i think its great that you are shooting for the sky and going for AAA. In reality, its an extremely tricky thing to pull off.

With the scroller, you may want to consider:

7.3 Until user agents allow users to freeze moving content, avoid movement in pages (priorty 2)

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-page...avoid-movement