Ensure screen reader specific content is rendered off-screen rather than hidden or not displayed

Description

Throughout the environment screen reader specific content is placed off-screen with the CSS class ""skip"". This is used in many different scenarios, such as <label> elements for input fields, informative text placed in <span> elements, and skip-links used to jump to the main content. All of these elements are positioned off-screen with this ""skip"" CSS class, however the class itself utilizes the CSS display:none property. This not only hides the content off-screen, but it also hides it from assistive technology. As such, screen reader users never interact with this content.

Developers must ensure that screen reader specific content placed off-screen remains exposed to assistive technologies. In order to ensure that this content remains exposed, the CSS display:none property must not be utilized.

This could be resolved with a unilateral change to the skip class, or by creating two classes so components of Sakai could consider their what their intent is.

Additional guidence for invisible content http://webaim.org/techniques/css/invisiblecontent/
Many examples of the "skip" class suggest that the should be placed off-screen as opposed to not read.

The label a11y:invisiblecontent has been added to track the larger scope of this issue across components of Sakai.

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Alexandre Ballesté Crevillén February 13, 2017 at 7:10 AM

I've tested in Sakai - 11.3-RC01 2017/02/10 in https://qa1-us.nightly.sakaiproject.org/portal.

.skip class is already is displayed but not visible at 11. Screen readears should be able to read them.

Sam Ottenhoff January 30, 2017 at 2:07 PM

Code is now in 11.x

Matt Clare January 30, 2017 at 2:05 PM

As this seemingly trivial, and having a large and positive impact, what can be done to ensure this gets into Sakai 11.next?

Matt Clare January 24, 2017 at 9:17 PM

Confirmed CSS changes and the change appears to have no negative affects on Chromevox on Master on Tuesday January 24, 2017 https://www.screencast.com/t/xwoz8nZa and matches my experience in Sakai 10 https://www.screencast.com/t/qmtrceUE

As this is an important part of Sakai, I'm noting that it would be great to have a authentic user who is familiar with JAWS etc. to do some follow-up testing.

Sam Ottenhoff January 24, 2017 at 4:06 PM

can you just confirm that the Github change here so we can backport this into Sakai 11 and close/delete all of these sub-tickets?

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Created July 22, 2016 at 3:11 PM
Updated April 3, 2018 at 10:08 AM
Resolved September 15, 2016 at 7:09 PM