Have you ever encountered a website that didn’t behave as expected?

i have; take earlier this week as an example. I attempted to leave a comment about another accessibility issue on the aWeber Blog. I entered my name, hit the TAB key, entered my email, hit TAB, entered my website address, hit TAB, and landed on the Submit Comment button…

Wait, did I miss something?

With my joystick I moved my cursor back to the website field and tried to again, in case I hit TAB twice accidentally the first time around. Again, I skipped over the comment box.

Doing what I do as a Web Accessibility Consultant, I then checked the source code. My suspicion was confirmed. Here’s what I found:

• The Name field was set to tabindex="1"
• Email: tabindex="2"
• Website: tabindex="3"
• Submit Comment: tabindex="5"

Wait a minute, what happened to tabindex="4"?

No wonder the comment box was skipped right over. There was no associated tabindex, which determines the order in which elements are tabbed to. By the comment field not having a tabindex specified, there is no way to get to this field using only the keyboard.

I am not alone in using the TAB key when submitting blog posts. According to the unscientific twtpoll (as of 10:47am pacific time on June 9, 2011), out of 11  people:

• 1 person (9%) prefer using their mouse (or equivalent),
• 6 people (55%) prefer using their TAB key, and
• 4 people (36%) don’t have a preference; whichever is easiest at the time.

More than half over the people prefer using the TAB key over the rodent when leaving blog comments. This means the process needs to be completely keyboard operable.

Defining the tab order is only necessary when the default tab order is not ideal; otherwise, the tabindex should be avoided. (See Keyboard Accessibility: Altering the Default Tab Order Using tabindex for more information.)

One task on today’s to-do list was to set up a Google group for a client to discuss migrating the organization’s static site to WordPress. I haven’t used Google groups, but I have previously used Yahoo groups. Setting up a group in Google shouldn’t be that much different.

The first step required basic information: the group’s name, a brief description and an access level. Once done, I hit the “Create my group” button and was presented with a CAPTCHA for verification purposes:

Are you kidding me? With my once perfect vision whose only impairment is being forty-four years old, I could not make out most of the garbled letters, even after tilting my head in various directions.

After a few moments, I decided to click on the wheelchair icon to give the audio CAPTCHA a shot. From previous experience I knew audio versions were equally garbled, but I figured it couldn’t be much more undecipherable than this image of garbled letters – or what I assumed were letters.

Much to my surprise, I was presented with:

What? Unable to handle my request at this time? What does that mean? All I requested was the audio CAPTCHA. I don’t want to try again later; I want to finish this task now. How is coming back later equal access?

I typed in my best guess. Obviously my guess was wrong because I was presented with a second CAPTCHA:

Again my middle-aged eyes could not decipher the distorted characters. Again the audio CAPTCHA was not available. Again I typed in a guess. Again I was wrong.

Had this frustration been required for submitting a blog comment, submitting an information request or ordering a purchase, I would have muttered “Forget it!”, closed the tab and not returned, ever!

But, this was legitimate work for a long-tem client. I had to complete this task. Again I tried:

The third time I hit the jackpot: the group was verified, finally. But this process should not be more challenging than winning in Vegas!

These darn things might be stopping most bots from proceeding, but how many humans are also blocked? There has to be another way to treat humans humanly while keeping out spammy bots!