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Thread: How to ARIA menus work with JAWS?
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From: Mark Magennis
Date: Fri, Sep 02 2022 9:57AM
Subject: How to ARIA menus work with JAWS?
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I'm confused about this and I hope someone can explain. Take a menu such as the one in the ARIA Practices example at https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/example-index/menu-button/menu-button-actions.html. Using JAWS/Chrome with automatic forms mode ON, if I tab to the Actions menu button and press Enter or Space to open the menu, JAWS doesn't switch to forms mode. But I can still arrow up and down through the menu and the web page moves focus between the menu items. How can this work? My limited understanding is that if JAWS is in browse (virtual) mode then it doesn't pass the arrow key presses through to the web application. So how can the web application know that the arrow keys have been pressed and respond by moving the selection? NVDA does enter focus mode when the menu opens but the behaviour is no different from JAWS.
As an aside, I also see that JAWS does enter forms mode if there is a role="button" on the menu <button>. This seems strange. Anyone know the intended logic behind this?
Mark
Mark Magennis (he/him)
Senior Accessibility Specialist
Skillsoft | mobile: +353 87 60 60 162
www.skillsoft.com<;http://www.skillsoft.com/>;
From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Fri, Sep 02 2022 3:00PM
Subject: Re: How to ARIA menus work with JAWS?
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Jaws actually goes into forms mode consistently for me (when you click
the button and focus moves to the menu it does).
The problem with Jaws, it doesn't know when to exit forms mode so it
stays in forms mode until you force Jaws out of it, at least it did
for me.
A menu button is supposed to a button with an attached menu of actions.
When you click the button, focus goes to an item in the menu and the
screen reader goes into forms mode (because arrow key navigation is
required within the menu, though authors are responsible for
implementing it).
Focusing the button does not force forms mode, only clicking it
(actually what triggers forms mode is focus moving into an element
with role="menu" and the element around the menu must have
role="menu".
On 9/2/22, Mark Magennis < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I'm confused about this and I hope someone can explain. Take a menu such as
> the one in the ARIA Practices example at
> https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/example-index/menu-button/menu-button-actions.html.
> Using JAWS/Chrome with automatic forms mode ON, if I tab to the Actions menu
> button and press Enter or Space to open the menu, JAWS doesn't switch to
> forms mode. But I can still arrow up and down through the menu and the web
> page moves focus between the menu items. How can this work? My limited
> understanding is that if JAWS is in browse (virtual) mode then it doesn't
> pass the arrow key presses through to the web application. So how can the
> web application know that the arrow keys have been pressed and respond by
> moving the selection? NVDA does enter focus mode when the menu opens but the
> behaviour is no different from JAWS.
>
> As an aside, I also see that JAWS does enter forms mode if there is a
> role="button" on the menu <button>. This seems strange. Anyone know the
> intended logic behind this?
>
> Mark
>
> Mark Magennis (he/him)
> Senior Accessibility Specialist
> Skillsoft | mobile: +353 87 60 60 162
> www.skillsoft.com<;http://www.skillsoft.com/>;
>
> > > > >
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