AAPI follow up: Selection events and browser/AT detection

Hi,
To follow up on a discussion we had in the last AAPI meeting on Tuesday, I wanted to illustrate a proposal that conveys selection changes within the accessibility tree for ATs to utilize.

Here is the scenario that this addresses:

When a combobox has focus, it is possible to type within that field, yet the dynamic listbox that appears does not have the auto suggested option conveyed to the user, so that an AT user typically is not aware when a listbox is rendered versus when it is not.

Note, this is not the same as when using aria-activedescendant to simulate a focus change in the accessibility tree, which to an AT user appears that focus is no longer actually on the input field any longer.

Instead, in this scenario, it is necessary to convey that a change has occurred, while keeping the user's perception on the input field so that editing is possible, such as arrowing left and right to navigate by character, or reading the current line, etc, without implying that focus has moved somewhere else preventing the user from reading what is present within the edit field.

Currently the only way to convey this type of information is to use an offscreen positioned live region, which is hacky at best and really should not be necessary to address this.

So, the proposal is to utilize aria-controls on the role=combobox element to reference the role=listbox container, so that selection changed events can be recognized when aria-selected is changed to "true" within role=listbox by bubbling this information back to the role=combobox element which can then be conveyed to the user without obstructing the user's perceptions of what element actually has focus.

This would allow not just the element with aria-selected='true' to be announced, but also for the positioning information such as "x of y" information to be conveyed as well, thus conveying not just the auto selected option but also how many other options are present within the newly rendered listbox.

I wanted to open this up here for discussion, since it would likely require some action by both browsers and ATs to accomplish.

All the best,
Bryan


Bryan Garaventa
Accessibility Fellow
SSB BART Group, Inc.
bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com
415.624.2709 (o)
www.SSBBartGroup.com

Received on Thursday, 28 July 2016 22:55:26 UTC