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Concurrent use of aria-describedby and aria-activedescendant

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From: Ney André de Mello Zunino
Date: Jul 21, 2011 2:48PM

Hello.

I have implemented a custom ARIA-enhanced grid widget which is to be
described by an external element, referenced by an aria-describedby
attribute. Additionally, I use an aria-activedescendant attribute which
should let users know which cell is the current cell, as soon as the
component received focus.

The problem is that when I add the aria-activedescendant attribute, the
component's description is no longer read by the AT (JAWS 11 with
Firefox 5, FWIW).

The expected outcome would be for the AT to first describe the grid
component and then proceed to describing its current cell. However, with
the concurrent use of the attributes, only the current cell (the element
referenced by aria-activedescendant) is described.

Could anybody help me in identifying the source of the problem? Am I
simply misusing or misunderstanding the attributes?

Thank you,

--
Ney André de Mello Zunino
Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento
Softplan/Poligraph
Sistema da Qualidade Certificado ISO9001:2008
Fone/Fax: 0xx(48) 3027-8000
http://www.softplan.com.br/