modal dialog, NVDA and Firefox

Hi 

I came across an interesting situation the other day which I hope someone
might be able to help me understand. 

The site has a number of pages with links that trigger modal dialogs. The
modals seem to work fine with the keyboard in that focus goes to the dialog
content when it opens and stays in the modal until closed with either the
close button(s) or escape key. And they seem to work fine when tested with
NVDA 2015 and JAWS 16 screen readers using Firefox or I.E.

Now several modals contain data tables (with captions and TH for column and
row headers). When JAWS was used with either browser, the standard keyboard
command for moving around table content (ctrl+alt+arrow) worked as expected.


However here's the problem, with NVDA and Firefox, when attempting to use
these commands to move along rows or up/down columns, the modal dialog
immediately closes and focus returns to the underlying page.

Sorry I can't provide many details or a link to the page since it is on a
developer server and covered by an NDA.

Thanks,

Roger

 

Roger Hudson

Web Usability

Web: www.usability.com.au

Twitter: http://twitter.com/rogerhudson

Email: rhudson@usability.com.au