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Re: [EXTERNAL] Accessibility: ARIA trees obviously not accessible with NVDa/JAWS screenreader and Firefox/Chrome on Windows

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From: Mark Magennis
Date: Jan 27, 2021 4:05AM

Hi Benjamin,

I have an idea that this may be to do with the screen reader expecting you to be in forms/focus mode in order to access the tree content. As you know, Aria treeviews are intended to implement a keyboard interaction pattern which is coded using Javascript. Screen readers Jaws and NVDA know this. So when you tab into the treeview (assuming the first element is focusable the screen reader automatically switches into forms mode (Jaws) or focus mode (NVDA term for the same thing).

My conjecture: When you arrow into the treeview the screen reader doesn't enter forms/ focus mode, but I'm guessing that it expects you to manually enter forms/focus mode if you want to interact with it and doesn't support interacting with it 'correctly' in browse mode.

So the screen reader is making a decision not to allow access to the tree content in browse mode.

Anyone think this is correct/wildly wrong?

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Sent: 27 January 2021 09:34
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Subject: [EXTERNAL] [WebAIM] Accessibility: ARIA trees obviously not accessible with NVDa/JAWS screenreader and Firefox/Chrome on Windows

Hello WebAIM Community,
I'm new in this list and hope you can give advice on that specific question.
We've basically implemented an ARIA tree in the way W3C recommends, please see cocde example in this link: https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Using_ARIA_trees

Many samples and templates (e.g. official ones from Angular) are based on these recommendations.
If you copy the code example (see link above) in a plain HTML file and open it with Firefox and Chrome, screenreaders can only access the first tree element (in this example "Fruits") and its child elements. Other elements at the first level are not accessible in the virtual mode of screenreaders.
This was tested using NVDA and JAWS screenreaders as well as Firefox and Chrome browsers.
Is this a known issue? Does t depend on specific product versions (screenreaders, browsers)?
Did anyone manage to solve the problem?

Best,
Benjamin

Benjamin Hofer | Deutsche Telekom