RE: Question about restitution of aria-describedby

Ensuring that aria-describedby works even when the referenced text is visually hidden has a strong use case because that text may not make sense to screen reader users in isolation (e.g. when browsing content with arrow keys). Hiding it prevents that potential confusion.

 

From: Marc Haunschild (Accessibility Consulting) <marc.haunschild@accessibility.consulting> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2023 9:44 AM
To: Armony ALTINIER - Koena <armony@koena.net>
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: Question about restitution of aria-describedby

 

Hi Armony,

 

This behavior is typical for most (all?) screenreaders. I was also surprised when I heard that for the first time.

 

I can’t remember which, but I think one SR-browser combination does not read the hidden texts and it’s considered a bug.

 

You might want to check the computation of accname if you want to know more about the spec, if you’re not familiar with it. But as far as I remember it is not about hidden text. Maybe this is way sr behave the way they do:



 <https://www.w3.org/TR/accname-1.1/> Accessible Name and Description Computation 1.1

 <https://www.w3.org/TR/accname-1.1/> w3.org

 <https://www.w3.org/TR/accname-1.1/> 

 

--

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

 

Marc Haunschild

https://Accessibility.Consulting





Am 17.10.2023 um 10:36 schrieb Armony ALTINIER - Koena <armony@koena.net <mailto:armony@koena.net> >:

 

Hi everyone,

I have a question about how aria-describedby is supposed to be rendered or not by screen readers.

I'm submitting this test file (see attachement) with 3 cases:

1. text with aria-describedby is linked to non-hidden text
2. text with aria-describedby is linked to text hidden with aria-hidden
3. text with aria-descrivbedby is linked with text hidden with display:none.


In case 1, it is normal for the text to be rendered. It seems strange to me that this also works on cases 2 and 3, whereas it works fine with NVDA.

Do you have any documentation about this behavior? Is it "normal"? If so, I'm having trouble understanding the logic. If it's not normal, and there are screen reader developers among you, I'd love a little explanation of this choice (I'll go fishing for info elsewhere if need be).

Many thanks in advance for any insight and documentation :)

Best Regards,
Armony

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<demo-aria-describedby-EN.html>