WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Combobox sufficiently accessibility-supported?

for

From: Detlev Fischer
Date: Oct 11, 2015 11:43PM

Thanks to both of you, Patrick and Brian, to pick up this the question and have this instructive discussion.

Brian, I have just opened your example on an iPhone (Safari), turned on VoiceOver, and tried using the Combobox. There are several issues that make it hard to use at least with iOS/ VO on a small screen:
*Default font small, making bigger via browser zoom cuts off content & requires horizontal panning
* Position and width of postbox not adapted to screen width (the native "fruit machine" widget would certainly be easier to use)
*Suggestions come unexpected (both visually and as VO output), they cause a jump in scroll status, making me lose the visual context of the input field
* Odd behavior of suggestions - typing "Ch" offers "Butcher" not "Chalker" as first list item voiced
* After selecting an option that is placed into the input, I seem to lose VO focus, I.e. I think it is no longer on the input so that the next focus point would be submit. The focus is instead on your text instruction at the physical position where the list box focus was before selecting the item
* Deleting content in the select makes the page immediately scroll to the list box top so the input where deletion takes place is no longer visible
Note this is just a quick check by a sighted user who is not a VO expert.
Best, Detlev

Sent from phone

Am 12.10.2015 um 03:13 schrieb Bryan Garaventa < <EMAIL REMOVED> >:

>> I don't think there's any particular need for consensus - all the various ATs don't have to use the same touchscreen gestures (and indeed, they don't for
>> many things), but what they do need is an underlying implementation of the concept of activedescendant, and some means for a user to interact with a widget
>> that uses it. Whether it be an up/down swipe, or a two- or three-finger swipe, or a more complex gesture is really up to each AT to decide.
>
> I agree, and this would be nice if supported. A lot of these issues are coming up as we continue working on the ARIA APG 1.1 update, and touch devices are sort of a hot topic for this across various interactive widgets.
>
> Going back to the original question though:
>
>> 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?
>
> With this in mind, can you identify any accessibility issues with the demo implementation that I referenced?
> http://whatsock.com/tsg/Coding%20Arena/ARIA%20Comboboxes/ARIA%20Comboboxes%20(Native%20Inputs,%20Editable%20with%20Substring%20Match)/demo.htm
>
> I really would like to know what these are, so I can improve this in the future.
>
> Thanks,
> Bryan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Patrick H. Lauke
> Sent: Friday, October 09, 2015 6:12 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Combobox sufficiently accessibility-supported?
>
> On 10/10/2015 00:52, Bryan Garaventa wrote:
>>> It is conceivable that this could be made to work though, with the
>>> focus nominally remaining on the combobox' input, but
>>> VoiceOver/TalkBack allowing the user to swipe up/down (same as cursor up/down) to cycle through the results/suggestions, while swiping left/right would take the user to previous/next item in the sequential focus order.
>>
>> That is true, and would be helpful if implemented. It doesn't say anything about this in the spec though, so achieving consensus on how it should work is debatable.
>
> I don't believe the spec authoritively defines any user agent behavior http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/ - and while we do have the best practices http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/ these are aimed at web content developers, and are not meant as a guide for user agent developers.
>
> I don't think there's any particular need for consensus - all the various ATs don't have to use the same touchscreen gestures (and indeed, they don't for many things), but what they do need is an underlying implementation of the concept of activedescendant, and some means for a user to interact with a widget that uses it. Whether it be an up/down swipe, or a two- or three-finger swipe, or a more complex gesture is really up to each AT to decide.
>
> P
> --
> Patrick H. Lauke
>
> www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
> twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke > > >
> > > >