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aria-hidden and NVDA, isn't this a bug?

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Aug 10, 2013 1:17PM

Greetings wise ones

Opinions needed and welcome.
I am experimenting with use of aria-hidden to hide lists/list items
and table cells.
This works nicely in Jaws, but not in NVDA.

Starting with lists.
Applying aria-hidden on a list item
<code>
<ul>
<li>List item #1</li>
<li aria-hidden="true">Hidden item 1</li>
<li aria-hidden="true">Hidden item #2</li>
</ul>
</code>
NVDA respects the aria-hidden use for the list items themselves, but
announces, in the list summary: "list with 3 items", even if the list
only contains one, and the quick key to jump to next list item does
not work.
This happens both in IE10 and FF22.
Using role="presentation" along with the aria-hidden does not have any effect.

Even if the latter two list items are wrapped up in a div with
aria-hidden set to true, NVDA still announces the list as having two
items.

Jaws recognizes both versions of the list as having just one item.
Similarly if a table cell is marked with aria-hidden Jaws ignores it,
but NVDA does not.
This can lead to serious navigation issues in tables with these cells,
since when inserted it forces an entire column and shifts all the
information to the right, creating a mismatch between column header
and the info they contain.
Just imagine a row with two columns.
First Name and Last Name.
If a td is inserted with aria-hidden="true", then the values, Jaws
announces the table as having two columns and two rows, and announces
values correctly.
NVDA announces table as having 3 columns and two rows and the table
navigation gets very messy actually.

So, basically, is it my misinterpretation that aria-hidden should hide
its element as well as all info inside that element.
Does aria hidden always have to be used on a container element such as a div?
A quick check on the ARIA specs did not really show me anything either
way, may be I was not interpreting something correctly.
Cheers
-Birkir