Is there a JAWS-friendly date picker for ASP.NET?

Question

Does anyone know of an ASP.NET date picker control that works well with JAWS? Barring that, do you have any tips for making the existing ASP.NET date picker control easier to use for JAWS users?

Answer 1

I doubt you'll have much luck getting the ASP.NET control to be accessible. If I were you, I would look into a client-side version of the control. I found this accessible date picker calendar online that is Javascript-based. You will likely have to do a little tweaking to make it work in your app.

Good luck!

Answer 2

The DateTimePicker is fairly accessible. Although the calendar pops up when the user clicks on the drop down menu, the month/day/year are still fully accessible without using the "you-pick" features from the drop down. You will notice if you tab focus to the DateTimePicker drop down, you will first get focus on the month, upon your next tab the day, and next the year. Our blind user could use the updown arrow keys to change the value of each, and the left right arrow keys to toggle between month/day/year to set the date and never actually deal with the you-pick functionality.

One issue I have found is that there is no role for DateTimePicker (at least in MS VS 2008). A work around I have come up with is adding instructions to the DateTimePicker AccessibilityName/Description.

Hope this helps!