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Overlay search box and screen reader modes

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From: Joseph Sherman
Date: Sep 10, 2019 10:43AM

Hi all. I have a search box overlay that is launched when the user clicks on a Search button. I believe it uses role="dialog".

The search box opens and the user is put in the search field text box. There are also a couple of links in the overlay, but no plain text. In Windows, JAWS and NVDA go into 'forms' mode and the user can Tab through all items with no problem, and focus is trapped in the overlay. However if a user manually turns off 'forms' mode and goes into browse mode using the virtual cursor, they can access the content behind the overlay using the arrow keys.

The Mozilla developer pages<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Roles/dialog_role> have a note that "While it is possible to prevent keyboard users from moving focus to elements outside of the dialog, screen reader users may still be able to navigate that content virtually to use their screen reader's virtual cursor. Because of this, dialogs are considered to be a special case of the application role: They are expected to be navigated by screen reader users in a non-virtual navigation mode."

My question is whether users know to stay in forms mode in the overlay, or is being able to access the content behind the overlay using browse mode a problem? If it is a problem, what is a good way to trap the virtual cursor?

Thanks.


Joseph