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Re: Usability of ARIA combobox

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From: Sean Murphy
Date: Nov 28, 2018 3:36AM

As I am a screen reader user. I am not a fan of aria-live being used. To much information when it is not required.

Deque, vision Australia Level access and some other sites have nice combo boxes. The only problem I have come across combo boxes is that the original value in the edit field is not retain if you press escape to cancel the selection of items.

I am coming from a user point of view, not a coding or accessibility issue.

Sean

My experience is the part

> On 28 Nov 2018, at 7:34 am, Catt, James < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Hi all, I'm looking for some input/opinions from regular screen reader users on the usability of ARIA combobox patterns.
>
> When following the ARIA combobox authoring practices (https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/#combobox), it seems as though the information read out by JAWS & NVDA when focusing the text input isn't that helpful. NVDA announces that it's a combobox, but doesn't provide any further info. JAWS adds that the arrow keys can be used to navigate the list, and may announce the expanded state of the listbox depending on the implementation. Generally speaking, though, by default there doesn't seem to be much info read out to inform the user that there's a list of suggestions available-it seems like they would have to be familiar with the design pattern and just guess that it's there.
>
> A better implementation seems to the be one used on expedia.ca - they use a live region to announce the number of results and tell the user that they can use the arrow keys to navigate.
>
> To regular SR users: do you encounter/use comboboxes often in the wild? Do you find they're useful and/or intuitive?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> James Catt
> Inclusive Design Consultant, OLB | CIBC Digital
>
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