Re: Authoring Practices keyboard interaction & screen readers

Those are great questions, Terrill. Those interaction models for widget
roles must be implemented by developers at the JavaScript layer; screen
readers will not natively support them. That being said, widget roles
essentially trigger the application mode in screen readers so that keyboard
events are passed through to JS.

So, I wonder if it would be best to:
1. test native screen reader commands (if they work and their output). An
example for this: if a screen reader lets the user pull up a list of
images, are elements with role=“img” in the list?
2. test the output of author implemented interactions for widget roles
(only their output, not if they are implemented by the author correctly).

In other words, yes, when testing, I think we should include the keyboard
interaction models that are documented in the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices,
as well as applicable native screen reader commands.

Do you agree?

Source:
ARIA 1.1. Widget role <https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#widget>: “When
the user navigates an element assigned any of the non-abstract subclass
roles of widget, assistive technologies that typically intercept standard
keyboard events SHOULD switch to an application browsing mode, and pass
keyboard events through to the web application.”

*Michael Fairchild, *CPWA
<https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/cpwacertification> *•* *Accessibility
Consultant*

Deque Systems <https://deque.com>


On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 7:24 PM Terrill Thompson <tft@uw.edu> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Just a point of clarification as you're wrestling with what to test for
> various design patterns: Are screen readers expected to support the
> keyboard interaction models that are documented in the WAI-ARIA Authoring
> Practices? And if so, and they already have the prescribed keys mapped to
> some other purpose, how are they expected to handle that?
>
> Since the keyboard interaction models are very clearly defined, perhaps
> that could be our basis for testing, unless screen readers aren't
> necessarily expected to support those models.
>
> Thanks for clarifying.
> Terrill
> ---
> Terrill Thompson
> Technology Accessibility Specialist
> DO-IT, Accessible Technology Services
> UW Information Technology
> University of Washington
> tft@uw.edu
>
>