forcing focus after page load ~unique

Question

Info:

Screen Readers: Jaws 14, Apple Voiceover

Browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox

So I have a web flow that I'm trying to make accessible via screen reader. Now it is composed of multiple vms. In the header there is a skip to main content so user can skip the redundant header that shows up on each page of the flow. My issue is the main body of the page gets ignored by the screen reader. I was able to use the following code to bring attention to the content and the screen reader will read from there.

 <script language="javascript">
    function reload() {
        window.location.href = "#page1";    
    }
</script>

then a tag to use as a anchor as follows:

<a name="page1" id ="page1></a>

This works great and all BUT now it skips over the header of the page.

So my question would be, is there a way to make focus to go back to the top of the page or a better way to force that content to be loaded to the screen reader will read it in a linear fashion?

I only have this problem in IE (yep who would of expected that). Voiceover and Jaws 14 has no problems in any other browsers.

Hopefully this description is clear, if not I can try to elaborate more if needed.

Thanks for your time, its greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

It sounds like you are updating content, inferred by the main body being ignored, in which case you might want to check out live regions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/ARIA_Live_Regions to communicate the update.

If main text is failing to voice when following the skip link without a dynamic update please post the HTML.