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Re: Question on Drop-down with MAC VoiceOver

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From: Mark Magennis
Date: Mar 25, 2022 6:47AM

Hi Alysa,

If I understand you correctly, you are asking why does a W3C example drop down coded using ARIA not behave the same way as a standard <select>.

It's because the keyboard behaviour of <select> controls varies a lot between different browsers (and often seems illogical). When you code an ARIA widget you have to code one set of keyboard behaviours, so which do you choose? Do you code it to work the way a <select> works in Safari? Or the way it works in Chrome? I imagine (I'm guessing because I haven't looked at the example) the answer is that you try to follow the standard approach for keyboard behaviour of ARIA widgets, e.g. Tab in, Arrow within, Tab out, ESC to close, etc. You may also take into account ways in which a <select> behaves that are consistent across browsers and try to stick with them to emulate the native control better. But sometimes there is a clash between the standard ARIA widget behaviour and the way the standard HTML controls works, as in what happens with Tab and ESC while a <select> is open in different browsers. It's very variable and not at all logical in my opinion.

Mark