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aria-labelledby vs aria-activedescendant

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From: Ney André de Mello Zunino
Date: Aug 10, 2011 6:06AM

Hello.

I'm having trouble getting a simple menu widget to be properly labelled
(/aria-labelledby/) when using /aria-activedescendant/ to manage focus.
When the widget receives focus, its label is not read; only the active
menu item given by /aria-activedescendant/ is. This behavior seems
misleading and lacking in the sense of providing a blind user with context.

Illustrative example:

<h2 id="menu-label">Colors Menu</h2>

<ul id="colors-menu" role="menu" tabindex="0"
aria-activedescendant="color1"
aria-labelledby="menu-label">
<li id="color1" role="menuitem">Green</li>
<li id="color2" role="menuitem">Yellow</li>
<li id="color3" role="menuitem">Blue</li>
</ul>

In the example above, when the menu receives focus, its label "Colors
Menu" is not read. Instead, only the active item "Green" is. I expected
the menu label to be announced prior to the item itself.

Has anybody got any info or experience with a situation like this?

Browser: Firefox 5
AT: JAWS 11

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/