RE: Screen reader operation appears strange on multi-page form

This sort of behaviour is not unusual with single-page applications in which the focus position is not being controlled properly. However, it doesn't sound like you have a single page application because it wouldn't work with JavaScript turned off. Or it would revert to the conventional behaviour of reloading the page between pages.

Another possibility is that the "autofocus" attribute is being used to intentionally place the focus somewhere. Or is all the page 2 content hidden with "aria-hidden"? That would give the same behaviour, but you could still access that hidden content by navigating backwards using tab key navigation. Apart from that I can't think of a non-JavaScript reason for the behaviour.

Are you able to share a link?

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


From: Bristow, Alan <Alan.Bristow@elections.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2023 5:17 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Screen reader operation appears strange on multi-page form

If anyone with screen reader (SR) experience knows the answer to the following I would be  most grateful - perhaps this is a misuse of this list, if so my apologies and please ignore.

Scenario

A survey is split over 5 HTML pages. When page 1 has been completed NVDA announces "Next" as I land on a BUTTON element that submits page 1. Activating the button, page 2 loads, and NVDA commences announcing the page content. However, the content it reads appears to consist of the contents of the TITLE tag, followed by what came after the similar spot where it left off on page 1, the content of the FOOTER element. This misses out all the new content that page 2 presented.

Tried with JS turned off. Tried in incognito with no extensions having access. Tried with the mouse pointer nowhere near the page (I usually navigate by keyboard (arrows / tab) when testing with SRs).

I wondered if perhaps each of the five FORM tags, one in each page, needed unique IDs, or something similar, but my research has failed to touch on this initial guess.

Any comments gratefully received.

Regards,

Alan

. . . . -   . . - - -
Alan Bristow ( he / him / il )
Web Developer / Développeur Web
Elections Canada / Élections Canada
alan.bristow@elections.ca<mailto:alan.bristow@elections.ca>