Form with Disabled Input Fields

This page was designed to test how screen readers (and browsers) handle disabled submit buttons. It has become an increasingly common practice to disable submit buttons by default, then enable them using Javascript once all user input validation tests are passed. The potential problem with this practice is that the button, while visible and clearly disabled to sighted users, is not easily found by screen reader users, who may be perplexed as to how they're supposed to submit their data.

Results

• Disabled input fields are excluded from the tab order in all browsers (tested IE9, Firefox 5, Chrome 12, Opera 11.5, and Safari 5), even with tabindex="0".
• All screen readers (JAWS 12, NVDA 2011.2rc1, and VoiceOver) skip the disabled input fields when navigating by tab (e.g., in "forms mode").
• In all screen readers, these buttons are discoverable by navigating independently of forms mode, or by bringing up a list of form fields (e.g., Insert + F5 in JAWS). However, with JAWS the buttons are never identified as disabled in IE9. In Firefox 5, they're identified as "unavailable". NVDA identifies these buttons as "unavailable" in both IE and Firefox, and VoiceOver identifies them as "dimmed" in Safari.