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Re: Semi-inert modals

for

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Mar 31, 2022 5:02PM

"Do you have to make it known to screen readers that the focus order is changed because of the activated element? Or does the dialog role handle that already?"

A dialog is simply a common widget type that non-sighted screen reader users are used to, so there is no need to notify users that the tab order has changed. When a dialog opens on the desktop and focus is set into it, it is expected that focus will remain in that dialog unless you activate a control or press Escape to close it. Any keyboard hints that are announced when the dialog opens are provided by the screen reader to assist navigation, but none of these should be hardcoded in the markup for the dialog, otherwise it will confuse users of differing device types such as mobile touch devices when they hear keyboard instructions that have no relevance in that environment. A datepicker is a complex widget type though, so it may be reasonable to provide some instruction when activating a help icon or some other mechanism. It just depends how complicated the controls are to operate it.

If the dialog is large enough to cover the majority of the content, it probably would be a good idea to make this modal, especially if there is no specific reason for it not to be such as providing an outside toggle or related controls that a user would expect to retain access to while it is open.

Whichever way you go, it is important to always ensure you can easily close the dialog from the keyboard or by activating a control for that purpose where a keyboard is not present. Many times I've encountered dialogs that assume keyboard access that could not actually be closed by touch on mobile devices because there was no mechanism provided for doing this when aria-modal was set to 'true' on a dialog role.

Hopefully this helps a bit.

All the best,
Bryan


Bryan Garaventa
Principal Accessibility Architect
Level Access, Inc.
<EMAIL REMOVED>
415.624.2709 (o)
www.LevelAccess.com

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Kian Badie
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2022 2:46 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Semi-inert modals

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.


Thank you both for the input! First, here (
https://www.cellstructureatlas.org/1-10-putting-it-all-together.html#clem)
is an example of the exact thing I am working on with the modal already opened if you are interested. Now that you bring up making the dialog fully modal, I am realizing that the dialog appears fully modal on mobile since there is less space. On desktop, if a user activates a link in the header/footer the modal will not persist and it will navigate to the new page. If another element is activated in the header (like search or opening navigation menu) it will appear over that modal window. While I think this makes sense at a glance, I would understand if this is bad accessibility practice and I would want to see what I could change to make things better.
I suppose users don't need access to the header/footer while the modal is open. However, it does feel a bit weird to have supplementary content take up more space than the main content. I guess that is part of the reasoning for the semi-modal dialog. But I am open to suggesting to my client to make it fully modal on desktop too if that is the best practice to do.

The date picker example is interesting. It traps keyboard focus without announcing anything. With both that and Birkir's suggestion of modifying the tab order of the page, I do have a question. Do you have to make it known to screen readers that the focus order is changed because of the activated element? Or does the dialog role handle that already?

Thank you,
Kian Badie

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 12:04 PM Birkir R. Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Oh, just to clarify, there are a lot of cases for non-modal dialogs as
> Bryan pointed out.
> I am confused by the need for a semi-modal dialog, a dialog that
> blocks interaction with the entire main content of the page while
> allowing interactions with the page header and footer.
>
>
> On 3/31/22, Bryan Garaventa via WebAIM-Forum
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Actually there are use cases for non-modal dialogs. Here is one, a
> > datepicker where it is still possible to interact with background
> content.
> > https://whatsock.com/Templates/Datepickers/Basic/index.htm
> >
> > From a keyboard perspective on Windows using a screen reader like
> > JAWS or NVDA, the dialog seems modal because the user perspective is
> > confined
> within
> > the dialog content. However, this is not true for touch device users
> such as
> > those using VoiceOver on iOS for example. In this last case, it is
> possible
> > to interact with the background content, which is important because
> > the triggering element is actually a toggle that can be used to
> > dismiss the dialog by touch.
> >
> > There are times when it is important to implement a non-modal
> > dialog,
> and in
> > this case, adding aria-modal="true" will actually impaire the
> accessibility
> > of the widget by hiding the background content from iOS touch device
> users
> > by making the background content inaccessible. This automatically
> > occurs without the use of aria-hidden within this environment.
> >
> >
> >
> > Bryan Garaventa
> > Principal Accessibility Architect
> > Level Access, Inc.
> > <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > 415.624.2709 (o)
> > www.LevelAccess.com
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf
> > Of Birkir R. Gunnarsson
> > Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2022 10:05 AM
> > To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> > Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Semi-inert modals
> >
> > CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do
> > not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender
> > and know
> the
> > content is safe.
> >
> >
> > ARIA Authoring Practices is not prescriptive/normative, while it is
> > a
> great
> > guideline.
> > If we think about this from the user's perspective, which is the
> > ultimate end goal, a user with a mouse is not able to interact with
> > the main
> content
> > of the page, so we must create the same affordance to someone using
> keyboard
> > or a screen reader, or as close to that as possible.
> > This means
> > * Hiding the main content of the page from a screen reader (you can
> > add aria-hidden="true" on the main content container, provided that
> > the modal dialog element is not a child of the main content container).
> > Block keyboard navigation to the main content, by setting tab key
> JavaScript
> > on the last focusable element in the header to either go to the
> > footer or the semi-modal dialog, ditto shift-tab on the first
> > focusable element in
> the
> > footer.
> >
> > Would it be possible to request a design change to make the dialog
> > fully modal? Are there strong reasons why the user would want the
> > dialog open while being able to navigate in the header/footer? What
> > happens if the
> user
> > activates a link in either the header or the footer, does the modal
> > go
> away
> > and a new page loads, or does the modal stay open obscuring the main
> content
> > of the new page?
> > In either scenario I don't quite see why any user should have access
> > to header or footer while the dialog is open.
> >
> >
> > On 3/31/22, Kian Badie < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> >> I have a modal element that does not make all outside elements inert.
> >> The modal covers the content window, but does not cover the
> >> header/footer elements. Therefore, mouse users are able to have the
> >> modal open while accessing the nav menu, search, and other controls.
> >>
> >> The modal still makes the inner content window inert (inner content
> >> as in everything in between the header/footer). I figured I should
> >> still treat it as a modal (as described by
> >> https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/#dialog_modal),
> >> however the aria practices state:
> >>
> >> "So, mark a dialog modal only when both:
> >> - Application code prevents all users from interacting in any way
> >> with content outside of it.
> >> - Visual styling obscures the content outside of it."
> >>
> >> So treating my modal as an actual modal would break that rule.
> >> Since it only made the inner content window inert, I leaned towards
> >> marking it up as a modal. Mouse users would still have access to
> >> the header/footer components and keyboard users could still access
> >> header/footer stuff by exiting the modal. However, it doesn't sit
> >> completely well to go against what I quoted from the aria practices.
> >>
> >> The alternative seems to not mark it up as a modal and manage tab
> >> order to tab through the header, modal, and footer elements to
> >> ignore the content underneath the "modal". But how would that be
> >> communicated in the markup/to screen readers? That doesn't feel
> >> right either. If I had to pick between the two options, it seems
> >> that marking it up as a modal is the better option, but I wanted to
> >> see if I could get any
> second
> >> opinions.
> >>
> >> Thank you,
> >> Kian Badie
> >> > >> > >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >> > >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Work hard. Have fun. Make history.
> > > > > archives at
> > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > > > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > >
>
>
> --
> Work hard. Have fun. Make history.
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >