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Re: Semi-inert modals

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From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Apr 4, 2022 11:05AM

Hi,
It depends on what you mean by support.

The accessibility API can map the dialog element to the dialog role, which will provide the same feedback if the dialog is properly labelled. This is how an H2 element has the same feedback as role="heading" + aria-level="2", and to screen reader users there is no difference.

However, for this to truly be accessible, a dialog has to manage focus appropriately, which means that scripting is needed to do so. For the browsers to do this automatically, they would have to guess at what is meant to receive focus within the dialog when it is rendered, which will likely conflict with actual focus handling that is built into the dialogs. It may be possible to override this to some extent, but doing so would likely be very buggy.

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

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If Firefox and Safari finally supported the dialog element, would this simplify authoring accessible modal dialogs? It seems to me that this would be so.

Jeff Gutsell