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Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)

From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Thu, Sep 09 2021 10:10AM
Subject: Is screen-reader silence on button activation a failure? If so, what does it fail?
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We have a button to select all checkboxes in a list, similar to gmail where you want to select all conversations. The button tells you that it will select everything, so the user should know what to expect. But when the button is activated, nothing is announced to screen-reader users. Dead silence.

The effect of the button is to simply change a bunch of checkboxes to be checked, and it performs that just fine. The page content doesn't change, and there is no visual alert to indicate that the button had any effect other than those checkboxes being checked instead of not checked. So I'm not sure if I pass this behavior or fail it.

Any advice would be appreciated.

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Thu, Sep 09 2021 10:22AM
Subject: Re: Is screen-reader silence on button activation a failure? If so, what does it fail?
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Add an aria-pressed attribute to the button. Set its value to "true"
when button is pressed and checkboxes are checked.
Depending on what happens next, either:
set aria-pressed back to false if pressing the button with all
checkboxes checked unchecks them again
add aria-disabled="true" if pressing the button with all checkboxes
checked does nothing.


On 9/9/21, Jeremy Echols < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> We have a button to select all checkboxes in a list, similar to gmail where
> you want to select all conversations. The button tells you that it will
> select everything, so the user should know what to expect. But when the
> button is activated, nothing is announced to screen-reader users. Dead
> silence.
>
> The effect of the button is to simply change a bunch of checkboxes to be
> checked, and it performs that just fine. The page content doesn't change,
> and there is no visual alert to indicate that the button had any effect
> other than those checkboxes being checked instead of not checked. So I'm not
> sure if I pass this behavior or fail it.
>
> Any advice would be appreciated.
> > > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Thu, Sep 09 2021 10:46AM
Subject: Re: Is screen-reader silence on button activation a failure? If so, what does it fail?
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I agree, and in an ideal world we'd announce "17 items selected" or something. And make it a true toggle button. But at the moment, that kind of change isn't feasible. And the button is basically disconnected from the checkboxes - the button just turns everything to checked regardless of their current state. There's a "Select none" button that's basically the opposite, and just as annoying to fix.

I guess I know what *should* be done, but right now we're stuck remediating things as best we can, not making major changes.

My underlying question is really just whether this is a WCAG failure, and if so, what it fails. We're having to prioritize a huge number of accessibility problems and I'm trying to let the other devs know how big a deal this one is.

From: glen walker
Date: Thu, Sep 09 2021 11:02AM
Subject: Re: Is screen-reader silence on button activation a failure? If so, what does it fail?
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Sometimes having to make minimal changes is all you can do. It's not ideal
but is a fact of business sometimes. It's better than no changes.

In your situation, if it's a true button and performs an immediate action,
and if you can't make it a toggle button as Birkir mentions, then you are
ok as is. You labeled the button with sufficient information that it will
select all the checkboxes. There's no need to announce that the action was
successful (unless you visibly have text on the screen that says "17 boxes
selected", which it sounds like you don't). The only time I'd make an
announcement that the button was successful is if there's a chance that it
won't be successful. That is, is there a situation where all the
checkboxes won't be selected? If not, then no announcement is needed.

From: Jeremy Echols
Date: Thu, Sep 09 2021 11:16AM
Subject: Re: Is screen-reader silence on button activation a failure? If so, what does it fail?
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Okay, good to know. Thanks!