I for one have been waiting to hear this news. One of the big 2 commercial screen readers will now support WAI-ARIA live regions. Let’s hope that this prompts GWMicro to add support in Window-Eyes. The JAWS version 10 public beta is scheduled for release during the week of August 24, 2008!
ARIA Live Region Support
JAWS can announce updates to live regions of Web pages when using Firefox 3 and later or Internet Explorer 8 and later. The dynamic section of a Web page that receives constant updates, such as news headlines, business information, and weather updates, is known as a live region. By default, JAWS announces updates for Web pages containing ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) Live Region markup. Web content creators add specific ARIA tags to their pages to mark regions as “live.” To stop JAWS from announcing updates, use the Announce Live Region Updates option to temporarily turn off this functionality. Just press INSERT+V while running your Web browser, navigate to this option, and then press SPACEBAR.
Source: What’s New in JAWS 10 Public Beta
