WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: single page app with language switching button

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Oct 1, 2020 12:39PM

I would say that you need to refresh the page, even if you don't want to. I know that one of the whole points of a single-page application is to avoid reloading pages, but this is a choice and it is completely unnecessary. You broke it, so you fix it. It's not as if people will be changing language very often, so it doesn't matter if the page reload takes a few seconds and looks a bit clunky.

I don't know if it would even be possible for you to force assistive technologies to refresh their virtual buffer or whatever else would be required to change the synthesizer language, but it seems like bad manners even if you can.

Sorry if this seems a bit harsh, but I am heartily sick of bad development choices manifesting themselves as accessibility problems, and then we're the bad guys for asking the developers to fix them. The use of a single-page application is never essential. It's a choice and it has consequences.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Farough, David (CFP/PSC)
Sent: 01 October 2020 19:08
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] single page app with language switching button

Given the following scenario, what is the best way to cause a screen reader to switch languages appropriately?

We have a single page application that will allow a user to switch between English and French. There is a button which specifies French or English at the top of page.
The Language for the page is switched appropriately, but even after refreshing the screen Jaws does not use the correct synthesizer language. The only way to get this to occur is to reload the page.

This is true for both Jaws and NVDA using Chrome.
Any suggestions as to how to address this?