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Re: Combobox sufficiently accessibility-supported?

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Oct 9, 2015 3:54AM

On 09/10/2015 10:37, Detlev Fischer wrote:
> Hi list,
> I did a bit of due diligence searching but the last Webaim entry mentioning the combobox is more than a year old.
> Would you still consider it best practice to avoid the combobox if favour of native selects?
> I like the possibility to type in a search term and see suggestions dynamically appear in a list below the input field, but I am worried that the experience might still be bad for some screen reader users.
> One example I found is http://oaa-accessibility.org/example/10/ but there may be better ones.
> Any thoughts?

Certainly for touchscreen/AT users (e.g. mobile phones/tablets),
comboboxes can present considerable problems, such as not being able to
actually navigate to any of the suggestions. This is particularly true
for the ones that rely purely on activedescendant, as that - from my
cursory testing a while ago - is not supported in iOS/VoiceOver nor
Android/TalkBack.

And beyond AT, even for non-AT touchscreen users, comboboxes can present
usability challenges on small screens, due to the on-screen keyboard
being in the way and not allowing for quick and easy interaction with
any results that show up.

In recent projects, I've actually recommended that for touchscreen and
small screen use, comboboxes / type-ahead suggestions / results should
be reimplemented as actual controls/buttons/lists of results that
dynamically show after an input (so they don't disappear once the input
loses focus).

P
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Patrick H. Lauke

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