Re: What constitutes a change of content in a live region?

IMO it should be interpreted as a change, but like you I discovered that 
it didn't actually trigger anything with JAWS. The spec is pretty clear 
on this (in aria-relevant)
"When text changes are denoted as relevant, user agents/must/monitor any 
descendant node change that affects thetext alternative computation 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#textalternativecomputation>of the 
live region as if the accessible name were determined from contents 
(nameFrom: contents 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#namecalculation>). For example, a 
text change would be triggered if theHTML|alt|attribute of a contained 
image changed. However, no change would be triggered if there was a text 
change to a node outside the live region, even if that node was 
referenced (viaaria-labelledby 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#aria-labelledby>) by an element 
contained in the live region."

I think we resolved it in our implementation by either removing the 
image and adding it again rather than just changing the alt text (not 
ideal but I think I recall that it worked for JAWS and didn't break 
anything else), or using hidden text and a decorative image (again not 
ideal)

Regards,
James

On 11/3/2015 5:52 PM, Birkir Gunnarsson wrote:
> Wise ones!
> I have a conundrum for thee.
> I have recently been working on prototypes for accessible real-time
> validation of password strength indicators.
> Usually these are presented as a series of images or icons that change
> when the value in the input field passes a test.
> To make this accessible, we played around with updating the image's
> accessible name (provided via its alt text, aria-label or title) and
> put the image in a live region to ensure the change in the name is
> announced to screen reader users.
> You can see a simplified prototype of the idea (using images
> presenting traffic lights and alt text indicating the traffic light
> colors)at:
> http://a11yideas.com/testcode/alttextliveregions/testAltTextLiveRegions_v2.html
>
> When you hit the button, the images change along with the accessible
> name source of your choosing. The change should be automatically
> announced by screen readers. Or should they?
> NVDA (with FF and IE) and Voiceover (iOS 9.1) announce the updated
> accessible name regardless of the method (alt, aria-label, or title)
> used to provide it.
> Jaws does not announce the change.
> The big picture question:
> Should changes in the accessible name of a widget located inside a
> live region, be interpreted as a change in the live region content.
>
> I tried looking around the ARIA spec, and I did not see a definitive
> answer to this question.
> If there is a clear answer to this, feel free to point me to it (I may
> have missed it).
> If the standards documentation does not address this explicitly, I
> think a future version should.
>
> It is a reasonable approach for these types of problems, and it would
> be good to know whether the lack of uniform support for them should be
> considered a limitation of certain assistive technologies, or whether
> this is simply not an acceptable approach.
> Thanks
> -Birkir
>

-- 
Regards, James

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James Nurthen | Principal Engineer, Accessibility
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