JAWS and wmode="opaque"

Started by Tyler on October 28th, 2009 14:59 | return to category | Follow by RSS

We serve videos with BOTR for a client and for the most part we're all happy with how it works. But now we've discovered that some user are having issues access the videos in JAWS.

I've tracked this down to (what I think) is the wmode setting when inserting the embed using the generated script.

Is there any way to change the wmode setting in the BOTR interface?

Thanks

JeroenW

October 29th, 2009 13:48

The wmode setting in the JS embed codes cannot be changed. It is buried inside the contentserver logic. However, the wmode setting in the alternative embed code is not set to use "wmode=opaque". Perhaps you can embed a video with this code on your site and ask one of your JAWS users if that solves the issue? If so, we should take a look at changing the wmode also for the javascripts.

A problem with the wmode="window" setting (which is the default) is that it prevents people to put HTML on top of the player. That's why opaque is the default with our javascript embeds.

Tyler

November 2nd, 2009 15:46

Hi Jeroen,

Thanks for getting back to me. I've dug deeper into this and the wmode="opaque" is the problem (in my situation at least). Copying out the generated html and changing the wmode="window" solved the problem. This was tested by several users with different versions of JAWS.

I'm aware that setting it to equal window prevents people from putting html on top of the player, but unfortunately that seems to cause accessibility issues.

http://niquimerret.com/?p=94 http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=e5141

After reading the previous links (and additional information) I believe this setting was introduced to account for browser issues actually. I can find reason and logic for using both settings of wmode. It would be useful for wmode="opaque" to be set when trying to set a menu above a video (and hide the illustration video/animation/flash/etc from screen readers), but it would also be useful to have it wmode="window" to allow for viewable videos and there controls to be accessible via JAWS

IMHO ideally I think it would be best to be able to set it via the BOTR interface on a per video instance - I look forward to this in the future as it should IMO be straight forward enough to accomplish.

Cheers

JeroenW

November 3rd, 2009 13:48

Thanks for the detective work. We'll investigate adding an option to the CMS.

For now, I recommend you use our SWF player and use your own embedding methond to place it in your site. That way you have control over the wmode property, but also fallback properties etc. Here's a tutorial on how to do this.

Tyler

January 14th, 2010 14:34

Hi Jeroen

I'm just checking back to see if any progress has been made on this issue - can the wmode now be changed from the BOTR interface?

Thanks

JeroenW

January 15th, 2010 12:45

No, the wmode default cannot be changed in the CMS. Isn't the option of using your own embed tag a lot easier? Then you can also set options like IE tabbing, for which we aslo do not have settings in the CMS.