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Re: ARIA Polite VS Assertive

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From: Jim Homme
Date: Apr 13, 2022 8:50AM

Hi Glen,
It sounds like you're saying that you prefer polite.

Thanks.

Jim

=========Jim Homme
Senior Digital Accessibility Consultant
Bender Consulting Services
412-787-8567
https://www.benderconsult.com/
Support the dreams of independence through employment for students with disabilities with your Amazon purchases.
https://smile.amazon.com/ch/83-0988251

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2022 10:34 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] ARIA Polite VS Assertive

I rarely use assertive and use role=alert even less than that. Unless the house is on fire, I just don't find that there are many messages that are so important that the screen reader needs to be interrupted to announce an update.

For example, in a chat interface, if I'm in a conversation and I'm typing a response and listening to what I'm typing and then the other person sends a response, I don't want my train of thought interrupted by hearing what they typed in the middle of what I'm typing. I'm ok hearing their response when I pause my typing. Now, one might argue that the other person's response might affect what I'm typing. That's true but to me does not justify interrupting what I was doing. But this is all just my personal preference.

You also have to consider that assertive regions might clear any pending messages. The aria-live spec says, "User agents or assistive technologies MAY choose to clear queued changes when an assertive change occurs." I'm not sure which screen readers actually do that or if there are heuristics or other factors that might cause it to happen. That is, JAWS or NVDA or Voiceover or whatever might clear a pending polite announcement if an assertive message came through in one situation but might not clear it in another situation. To me it's too undefined on when that might happen and goes back to whether messages are important enough to interrupt what is happening.


On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 8:15 AM Jim Homme < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi,
> I need to support a chat system and it needs to work for all screen
> readers. Does anyone know the differences between how JAWS handles
> ARIA assertive and polite messages VS how JAWS handles them? The same
> goes for Narrator, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. And are there differences
> among browser combinations?
>
> Thanks for any and all help.
>
> Jim
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jim
>
>
> =========> Jim Homme
> Senior Digital Accessibility Consultant Bender Consulting Services
> 412-787-8567
> https://www.benderconsult.com/
> Support the dreams of independence through employment for students
> with disabilities with your Amazon purchases.
> https://smile.amazon.com/ch/83-0988251
>
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >