keyboard navigation for 508 compliance
keyboard navigation for 508 compliance
jrichview
Posts: 36Questions: 7Answers: 0
I'd like to add another request for row-based navigation by keyboard. We chose DataTables for a project for a state govt agency and didn't anticipate the lack of capability to navigate to and select a row via keyboard. Agency requires this for 508 compliance. KeyTable seems like it could be modified but we're behind schedule and not able to tackle that right now.
We'll probably be forced to take an ugly shortcut like adding a button column to select rows.
Sure seems like an enhancement that would benefit a lot of people if you could knock it out in a matter of cpl hours. Easy win?
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Hi,
Thanks for the vote. A rewrite of KeyTable is something that I am currently planning, although there are a number of other things in my queue before that can take place. If you are interested in sponsoring development of this, I'd be happy to talk about that - drop me an e-mail - allan @ this domain.net.
Regards,
Allan
Allan,
I'll run that by our decision maker. As a fellow developer (since '88), I completely understand that you have a lot of issues on your plate. My hairs going gray from workload as well.
I don't know about an entire KeyTable rewrite, but I'd volunteer my personal time to at least implement the row selection feature for you if you were able to devote a small block of time to getting me off and running in the right direction. I could do it on my own given enough time, but obviously you could short circuit my learning curve significantly.
I do a lot of government contract work, so it would be worth spending some of my off hours to have dataTables as a resource that I can trust will pass 508 reviews for future projects.
Just a thought...Thanks again for your response.
To be honest, I would probably suggest bypassing KeyTable in its current state and adding a reasonably simple key event handler wrapper around TableTools' row selection options and API. You could do it with KeyTable, but as I say, I'm going to rewrite it entirely - its old code now and I've moved on myself in my development abilities, so its time for KeyTable to come with me :-).
Allan
Gotcha. We actually have our own select code implemented, so I hate to unwire that at this late date and try to add TableTools. But I'll keep that in mind.
Maybe we can just add it to what we have, but we'll need to set a tabindex so that the rows can be navigated to in the first place. We have some cases where data is in table in the dom already and other cases where the rows are generated from server side. So not sure how much time it would take to get all the cases right.
On side note: I have created a somewhat general table lookup control by deriving from jquery UI dialog widget and using dataTables as the grid in the dialog. Probably reusable without much work, as it pulls data from sAjaxsource. Easily configured to populate multiple fields in the html form from the selected row. Maybe I'll post it when this project is over and I have time to decompress.
Sounds interesting. I'd certainly be interested to take a look :-)
Allan