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Re: SC 2.2.2 and Screen Readers

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From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: May 24, 2019 1:34PM

On 24/05/2019 19:48, Wolfgang Berndorfer wrote:
> Hi Birkir & all,
> I work with Fusion, more with Jaws in that then with Zoomtext. And I
> experiece the problems you described too often. But are they an issue of
> 2.2.2?

The point of the SC is to avoid distractions for users. Pages that have
things like autoplaying videos with audio, or text content areas that
update frequently and do use aria-live, will end up distracting users
(including AT/screenreader users), so need a way to pause/stop/hide
(suppress) these kind of distractions (being able to pause the video or
audio or whatever playing in the background, being able to pause
updating /announcements of those live regions)

> Aria-live should handle these problems for screen readers. But ARIA isn't
> focussed by 2.2.2.

The technology is irrelevant, it's about any forms of distractions.
Whether it's a section of the page designated as a live region, which
gets constant updates pumped into it leading to constant announcements
by AT, or videos/audio snippets that keep getting fired...the important
thing is that this SC targets the end result of things
happening/updating visible/audibly that can distract users.

> By the way: Which SC can be relevant for usage of
> aria-live?

In what way relevant? For things like "it should announce this, but is
NOT a live region so AT won't announce it"? In that case, if it's a
visual status message (like a toast notification or similar), then not
announcing it is a failure of the new SC 4.1.3 Status Messages. If it's
not specifically about an actual visible status message, but more about
"something happens on the screen (e.g. a whole chunk of content got
updated, but it's not appropriate to move focus to it, so it should be
announced using aria-live but it isn't"), then arguably a failure under
4.1.2 as a state change is not announced (this aspect is still a bit
vague in WCAG 2.1)

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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