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ARIA Sliders now work correctly in iOS using swipe gestures

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From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Jul 14, 2021 4:03PM

Hi,
These now work in conjunction with a feature enhancement that Apple made in their accessibility API earlier this year to address the historical lack of support for swipe gestures when interfacing with JavaScript-based ARIA slider widgets using VoiceOver.

Horizontal slider: http://whatsock.com/Templates/Sliders/Horizontal/<;http://whatsock.com/Templates/Sliders/Horizontal/index.htm>;
Vertical slider: http://whatsock.com/Templates/Sliders/Vertical/<;http://whatsock.com/Templates/Sliders/Vertical/index.htm>;
Download: https://github.com/WhatSock/apex (Requires 4X version "Mona Lisa Overdrive")

For many years these have been broken, where VoiceOver would announce that you could swipe up or down to adjust the slider, yet doing so would do nothing. This issue occurred because there wasn't a way for the accessibility API to directly interface with the JavaScript functionality of the simulated slider, nor predict what was meant to happen when it moved.

Finally, a compromise was suggested to make this work, by passing through the corresponding key event to the slider handle based on the orientation of the slider widget. E.G. Vertical would pass the Up key event to decrease the value, and Left would decrease the value for horizontal sliders. Thanks to Alice Boxhall, James Craig, Dominic Mazzoni, and Alexander Surkov for working on making this possible. 😊 Relevant details are documented at:
https://github.com/WICG/aom/blob/gh-pages/explainer.md#user-action-events-from-assistive-technology

All the best,
Bryan


Bryan Garaventa
Principal Accessibility Architect
Level Access, Inc.
<EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
415.624.2709 (o)
www.LevelAccess.com<;http://www.levelaccess.com/>;