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Re: Multiple live regions

for

From: Léonie Watson
Date: Sep 30, 2015 10:10AM

> From: WebAIM-Forum On Behalf Of Stein Erik Skotkjerra
> I have checked the ARIA specs and the UAG, but couldn't find anything
> specifically covering this - possibly a bit narrow - situation. I would expect that
> when the ARIA live region is to be polite it should queue up announcements,
> but this doesn't happen - at least not in any of the combinations of Screen
> readers and web browsers I have tested so far. The solution so far has been
> to detect these situations and generate a delay to ensure that no
> information is lost for screen reader users.
>
> So my question was not so much if this is good or bad design, but if my
> expectations for behavior are in line with yours or not :)

If two live regions update simultaneously, where one is assertive and the other polite, then the announcements should be queued. If the live regions are both the same priority, the announcements should not be queued.

The idea behind live regions is to cause a screen reader to stop what it's doing and announce the updated content. If what it is doing is announcing the first live region update, the second live region update will interrupt that. If two live regions with the same priority level update simultaneously, then factors like browser, script and screen reader performance will probably determine which of the updates succeeds.

Léonie.

--
Senior accessibility engineer @PacielloGroup @LeonieWatson