NFB posted this video, which is jawsome and anyone who builds forms should watch it.
They’ve turned JAWS way way way down slow so everyone should be able to hear it.
Notice how much “help” and contextual text there is around some of the inputs which are not read out: not just the feedback messages (which are likely given via AJAX… no page refresh in older readers means, no update to the virtual buffer… though most newer readers can deal with non-refreshing page updates, but then pls use ARIA-* attributes to alert users of something changing on the page… or consider using Javascript to move the focus to the new text as soon as it appears (you could add a negative tab index which then allows onfocus() to work)).
Audio CAPTCHAs are the devil. Why not non-distorted sounds of common things and ask people what they are? (Similar to the multiple cats/dogs images where you are asked how many cats or dogs… meaning you’re expected to be able to tell the difference visually between a cat and a dog. Something many robots can’t do).
The lack of a list of errors above the form is an easy thing for any dev to fix. You can even have them be links that go directly to the input in question.
You can also add aria-describedby attributes to the errors you have that are directly above the bad input, though I get mixed results between JAWS, NVDA (who seems to rock at forms) and Orca.
(here’s a great intro/description by Marco Zehe:
[noparse]http://www.marcozehe.de/2008/03/23/easy-aria-tip-2-aria-labelledby-and-aria-describedby/[/noparse]
)