RE: A question about immediate feedback

The second popup is a status message, so some or all of it must be exposed to assistive technologies by means of an ARIA live region in order to conform with WCAG SC 4.1.3. It might also be appropriate to move the focus to the popup as Dan suggests, and possibly make it modal, but we don’t know enough about the page to be sure.

While assistive technologies might announce the contents of the second popup when you move focus to it, you cannot rely on that for conformance with WCAG SC 4.1.3. Behaviour may vary between assistive technologies, and other events may cause the announcement not to happen or to be terminated.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


From: Dan Horning <dsoundmn@gmail.com>
Sent: 25 June 2025 19:10
To: Mike Cleary <mike.cleary@grantsolutions.gov>
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: A question about immediate feedback

Hello,

You might want to set the focus to the dialog text, we had success with that in some projects to ensure that it was read - similar to the pattern of a dialog for the timeout of a session with a close/continue button. It also sounds likely that you might not be disabling the other parts of your screen with the alert/dialog of the success status. Hope those help!

Dan Horning
dsoundmn@gmail.com<mailto:dsoundmn@gmail.com>


On Jun 25, 2025, at 1:44 PM, Mike Cleary <mike.cleary@grantsolutions.gov<mailto:mike.cleary@grantsolutions.gov>> wrote:

Hello all,

Does a user action like a download need to be confirmed in the immediate aftermath of taking that action? or is it acceptable if the confirmation is consistently announced, albeit after a little navigation?

We have an application where a user clicks a "Download" link on a popup form, and a second popup displays to say the download succeeded or failed. However, screen readers don't read the confirmation popup right away.
Browsers post their own equivalent popups about the download, which seem to compete for focus. Screen readers read the browser confirmation in Firefox, but don't manage to read those confirmations in Edge or Chrome.
If the download works, the focus ends up on original Download link (per SC 3.2.2). When that popup form with that link is closed, screen readers always read the popup confirmation next.

Is it a problem that the screen reader doesn't always provide immediate feedback?  Or is WCAG 2.0 satisfied because the screen reader always eventually gets there.

Please advise.

Mike





Mike Cleary (Contractor) | Scrum Master
Guidehouse, Inc.
mike.cleary@GrantSolutions.gov<mailto:email@GrantSolutions.gov>

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