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Re: ARIA role changing browser behavior

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From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Dec 4, 2023 3:26PM

Impossible to be certain without seeing the code, but your supposition is certainly plausible at least. When I have a control that I know has to behave a certain way, I like to latch onto ARIA attributes so that I can be reasonably certain that if the control looks to be working for sighted users, it is probably working for screen readers.

You can actually see things like this in the W3C ARIA examples. For instance, a disclosure menu widget's JS is set up to "attach" itself to any button with aria-expanded and aria-controls attributes: https://www.w3.org/WAI/content-assets/wai-aria-practices/patterns/disclosure/examples/js/disclosureMenu.js

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Jim Allan
Sent: Monday, December 4, 2023 13:58
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] ARIA role changing browser behavior

Hi all
I was testing a webpage that had an input that was readonly, but visually functioned like a dropdown (some kind of react control - I am not a scripter). the items in the 'dropdown' were 5 divs with several 'class'
values and tabindex=-1. the input control was a disaster and did not function properly.
I hacked around in the Inspect tool. I removed the 'readonly' and added a role="listbox" to the <input> and suddenly the input functioned perfectly from the keyboard with a screenreader.
It has always been my understanding that aria roles change what the screen reader calls something but does not affect the functioning. I am perplexed.
Could there be something in the JS that is looking for role="listbox" and doing different things? Or is something else going on?
Anyone else experienced this?
I can't share the code as its a dev site.
Seeking understanding...
Jim

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Jim Allan, Accessibility Coordinator
Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
1100 W. 45th St., Austin, Texas 78756
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