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JAWS, modals, and aria-labelledby

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From: Sean Keegan
Date: Jul 28, 2015 9:30PM

Hello,

I am working with developers on a modal in which JAWS will only read a set
amount of characters when the modal is first triggered. Because the modal
information is considered critical, the developers created separate DIVs
with id values and then added aria-labelledby to the parent DIV with the
respective id values. As a result, the entire content is presented as the
accessible "name" of that modal.

Both NVDA and ChromeVox read all the content in the parent DIV when the
modal is first triggered and VoiceOver reads all paragraph elements (it
skips any non-paragraph element). JAWS, however, only reads the first 180
characters (approximately) of the modal and then jumps to the focused
element.

I suspect that JAWS is limiting what is considered to be the accessible
name of the modal when it is first triggered. The entire modal can be
navigated and read with the virtual cursor, but the accessible name as
defined by the aria-labelledby attributes is truncated to a certain number
of characters when the modal is first triggered.

Has anyone had this experience with JAWS such that it will only read a
certain amount of content set by multiple aria-labelledby values?

This is happening for JAWS 16 in IE 10 and Firefox 39.

Take care,
Sean