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Re: Voiceover bugs for Web

for

From: Murphy, Sean
Date: Oct 25, 2021 2:19AM

Glenn,

The point is you should not have to use such undocumented solutions. No other screen reader requires this on desktop or mobile. Using aria to address shortcoming of assistive technology isn't best practise. These types of band-aid solutions are not supporting the community of users who require this technology to access digital content. If any main stream vendor is stepping into the assistive technology space, then they need to be held accountable to making the assistive technology work for the end user and not have such strange bugs placing more effort on to other developers.

Likewise for browser vendors, there is a lot of ARIA usage which could quite easily be address by HTML and CSS. Reducing the crappy implementation of ARIA that exist now. Browser vendors from my point of view are using ARIA as a band-aid solution rather than expanding the specs to provide support for common patterns being used today.


Regards
Sean Murphy

Sean Murphy | Senior Digital System specialist (Accessibility)
Telstra Digital Channels | Digital Systems
Mobile: 0405 129 739 | Desk: (02) 9866-7917
Submit an Engagement Accessibility form
Accessibility Single Source of Truth

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Monday, 25 October 2021 4:37 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Voiceover bugs for Web

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For iOS (not sure if it works for Mac), you can use the *undocumented* text role. It's not officially supported and support for it could drop at any time, but it's been working for at least 7 years now.

<div role="text">hello world <span> this is a fine place</span></div>

This will read the entire <div> in one swipe.

On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 11:20 PM Murphy, Sean < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> All,
>
> Our accessibility team has noticed some bugs with Voiceover and Safari
> when using <div> and <span>. If a <span> is used within <divs> or
> other elements. The span tag is treated as a block element. Below are
> two scenario's we have discovered:
>
>
> 1. We have a design pattern for checkboxes which uses native HTML
> elements. Nested within the label is a <span> which has the visual
> description. Jaws for windows, NVDA, iOS Voiceover and Talk back
> android all treat this construct correctly. The screen reader
> announces the label and description, plus the state of the element in
> the correct order. Mac Voiceover says the label then "one more item".
> Aria-describedby could fix this issue if we applied it, but this is a
> unnecessary work around because all other screen readers work correctly.
> 2. On voiceover on iOS. If you use a <div> and <span nested. Such
> as <div> hello world <span> this is a fine place </span><div>.
> Voiceover announces the div text on the first swipe, then the span on
> the second swipe. Rather than reading the whole block of text. All
> other screen readers we have tested treat it as a single block of text
> as the <div> is a block element.
> Other than making people aware of these strange issues, I am wondering
> if there is any resource out there which highlight these types of
> issues or a place to try and get them fixed.
>
>
> Regards
> Sean Murphy
>
> Sean Murphy | Senior Digital System specialist (Accessibility) Telstra
> Digital Channels | Digital Systems
> Mobile: 0405 129 739 | Desk: (02) 9866-7917 Submit an Engagement
> Accessibility form<link:%20
> https://confluence.tools.telstra.com/display/DCSYS/Request+Form>
> Accessibility Single Source of Truth<
> https://confluence.tools.telstra.com/display/DCSYS/Accessibility>
>
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >