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Re: Opinions on Custom Select Menu Behavior

for

From: Vincent Young
Date: Oct 28, 2011 3:33AM

And an early ARIA combobox example I've been working on:

http://www.webhipster.com/testing/accessibility/combobox/

I am being FORCED to implement this as an ARIA combobox... diplomacy FTW! I
want to be sure there is proper notification and the user experience is more
than just tolerable. Has anyone had experience implementing a custom ARIA
combobox across a lot of different browsers/AT and not just JAWS 13/IE 10?
We support the following:

JAWS 11+ IE8+ & FF 3.6+
NVDA+ FF 3.6+
VoiceOver 10.7+
(IOS 5 if possible)

Any help, experience, suggestions, feedback, comments, etc. would be much
appreciated.



On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Vincent Young < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Also, if we should not pick or program behavior that is specific to one
> browser or assistive technology then what should the standard be? If we
> should look toward the AOL DHTML Style Guide (
> http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide#combobox) for interaction standards I
> am fine with that, but in terms of what should be read and how I am
> uncertain.
>
> For example when you have an aria combobox focused and closed when you type
> the first letter in which is the start of one of the listitems, that list
> items gets selected (just like in a native select). However in many
> browsers/assistive technology proper notification is not given to the user a
> change has occurred so a hack must be implemented. How and what should be
> read is what I am wondering.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 5:44 PM, Vincent Young < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:
>
>> You're right. Not sure, why I thought they were using ARIA. Better
>> example:http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dojox/form/DropDownSelect.html.
>> I'm trying to come up with an ARIA solution that will work today. Just
>> want to make sure users are OK with the disconnect. If I am using the
>> combobox role for the select menu it is notified as combobox, but in
>> Safari/VoiceOver the native select is notified as a menu. Have you or
>> anyone run into any issues with this? Thanks.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Jared Smith < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>
>>> The Filament Group custom select menu has an actual <select> menu that
>>> is interacted with. This means that the behavior will be typical for
>>> the browser it is presented in. There's no need to pick or program
>>> behavior that is specific to one browser or assistive technology.
>>>
>>> Jared Smith
>>> WebAIM.org
>>>