Contrib.social

Convey AJAX progress messages to assistive technology.

Open on Drupal.org →
Created on 15 May 2018, over 6 years ago
Updated 13 May 2023, over 1 year ago

Problem/Motivation

The AJAX API has a feature to display a progress message, but it isn't conveyed to assisitive tech like screen readers.

'#ajax' => array(
  'callback' => 'Drupal\config_translation\FormElement\DateFormat::ajaxSample',
  'event' => 'keyup',
  'progress' => array(
    'type' => 'throbber',
    'message' => t('Loading more products'),
  ),
),

Proposed resolution

Find a way to convey the progress message to
Possibilities (use one approach only, not both):

  1. Mark the visible AJAX message as an ARIA-live region (preferred?), or
  2. Duplicate the visible message using a Drupal.announce() call.

Other possibilities might be to provide incrementally updated messages, like "Updating... 30%... 80%... finished".

Remaining tasks

tbd.

User interface changes

No visual changes. Format the AJAX message so it is conveyed to assistive technology, e.g. so screen readers can announce it.

API changes

TBD. Maybe we always treat the message as an aria-live region, or maybe we make it an additional option.

Data model changes

TBD.

Background reading

Commit credits

@bgrobertson, who reported this issue on the #accessibility channel on Drupal Slack, and researched which bits of the AJAX API were relevant. This issue report is a summary of his comments there.
@ckueda, who provided a patch on the duplicate issue #2907132: Indicate ajax throbber activity to assistive technology → , which is broadly similar to the earliest patch here.

🐛 Bug report
Status

Needs work

Version

10.1 ✨

Component
Ajax  →

Last updated about 5 hours ago

Created by

🇬🇧United Kingdom andrewmacpherson

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  • Accessibility

    It affects the ability of people with disabilities or special needs (such as blindness or color-blindness) to use Drupal.

  • Needs manual testing

    The change/bugfix cannot be fully demonstrated by automated testing, and thus requires manual testing in a variety of environments.

  • Needs accessibility review

    Used to alert the accessibility topic maintainer(s) that an issue significantly affects (or has the potential to affect) the accessibility of Drupal, and their signoff is needed (see the governance policy draft for more information). Useful links: Drupal's accessibility standards, the Drupal Core accessibility gate.

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