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Re: Selects with drop downs

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From: Steve Green
Date: Mar 14, 2018 8:31AM

I have been testing those Whatsock comboboxes recently and I find that they only work well under certain specific circumstances. There are many ways in which a user can interact with even a simple combobox (I have tested ten ways but there are potentially more), and the Whatsock designs don't work at all well in some cases. In one specific case, JAWS 2018 announces that the combobox has been set to a different value than has actually been selected.

It's worth noting that even when the behaviour is acceptable, the user experience is substantially different from a native combobox. I find it disappointing and frustrating that the HTML5 and ARIA specifications have not been written such that it is possible to closely or exactly emulate a native combobox. It would be interesting to know if there is a reason for this. It seems such an obvious thing to want to do.

I hadn't planned to post these comments yet but I felt obliged to since you were recommending these designs. I will send Bryan Garaventa my report as soon as it is complete. I very much hope that he can fix his designs because they are better than any other combobox replacements I have tested. However, I don't regard them as being good enough to recommend to our clients yet.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd