-Look at fixing AJAX rather than simply saying “it is not accessible”. Nothing in AJAX is inherently accessible or inaccessible. It’s about implementation

Common problems
—”js support is spotty” (10% of browsers don’t support JS)
—doesn’t meet WCAG1.0
—bookmarking/back button issues.

Solutions
–provide indication of scripting requirement
—provide notification of state change
*note, some of these visual indicators can be overwhelming even to sighted users as well (just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should)
—update elements with new content rather than creating new elements

However, these solutions still don’t make them accessible to screen reader users. This is due to how screen readers work.

Screen readers read from a content buffer, so it does not notice changes until the buffer is refreshed.

SR Modes:
visual PC cursor - interacts with buffer
forms mode - bypasses buffer, interacts with onscreen elements. Theoretically, any AJAX functionality occuring on a form should be picked up.

-JAWS/FF refreshes buffer more often than JAWS/IE

-Right now, AJAX issue is somewhat a philosophical one. Hard to say whether it will or will not work. So do we wait for screen readers to catch up, or do we start implementing it now?

JW: my opinion is we don’t wait (probably not popular in the accessibility field). It’s in the implementation we figure out what will or won’t work.

ME: so if users can reload the buffer, can we simply instruct them to do so when they do something AJAX-Y?
JW: that may be a solution

Another link I found (not sure of quality of content: http://juicystudio.com/article/making-ajax-work-with-screen-readers.php)