ARIA Channels: ReefChat and Fire Vox as a Case Example

Abstract

Web 2.0 enabled by the Ajax architecture has given rise to a new level of user interactivity through Web browsers. Many new and extremely popular Web applications have therefore arisen, some examples being Google Maps, Google Docs, Flickr, and so on. Unfortunately, the accessibility support in most Ajax applications overall is lacking. WAI-ARIA markup for live regions and channels presents a solution whereby these applications can be made accessible. To address this problem, our team developed an accessible Ajax chat application called ReefChat and added support for ARIA live regions to Fire Vox, a talking browser extension for Firefox. Highlighted features include: (a) chat message notification through live regions to notify the AT, (b) enabling keyboard access for moving to the next and previous messages in the chat transcript area, and (c) enabling keyboard access to jump to the next and previous messages from specific users. In this article, we will open with a brief discussion of the challenges of making Web 2.0 applications accessible to visually impaired users and will then describe ReefChat and Fire Vox.