403544 - activedescendant update does not fire focus event sometimes

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Disability Access APIs, defect)

Description

[clc4tts]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b2pre) Gecko/2007111204 Minefield/3.0b2pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b2pre) Gecko/2007111204 Minefield/3.0b2pre

Setting aria-activedescendant does not always fire focus events. For example, if the element with the activedescendant has role="wairole:group", setting activedescendant will not fire focus a focus event.

Please see the attached example. It is a modification of the listbox example at http://www.mozilla.org/access/dhtml/listbox

The changes are:
1. aria-activedescendant instead of aaa (using aria- instead of namespaces)
2. Changing role="wairole:option" to blah="foo" (pointless except to keep the javascript running)
3. Changing role="wairole:listbox" to role="wairole:group". 



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open the attached file 
2. Put focus on the listbox
3. Use cursor keys to move through choices while an assistive technology that uses MSAA is active.
Actual Results:  
The actual behavior is that while the selection still works visually, it is no longer firing the appropriate events and JAWS and Windows-Eyes are not picking up the changes.

Expected Results:  
The expected behavior is that it would still fire focus events and work as the original example did for JAWS and Windows-Eyes.

Comment 1

[clc4tts]

Attachment: Modification of http://www.mozilla.org/access/dhtml/listbox

This is a modification of http://www.mozilla.org/access/dhtml/listbox that demonstrates the bug.

Comment 2

[Aaron Leventhal]

I don't see the bug.

Looking at this with Inspect I see the focus events are in fact working correctly.

The list items have no role. Perhaps the problem you are seeing is that when there is no role, the screen reader you happen to be using does not report the focus.

My finger is hovering over the INVALID button ...

Comment 3

[clc4tts]

It failed in both JAWS and Windows-Eyes.

Interestingly enough, if I have a role of group and the item that I am trying to set as active descendant has a role of row, it works.

However, I expected the active descendant to work for any element, regardless of whether or not I have a role on it as it is just a simple forwarding of the focus... 

Comment 4

[Aaron Leventhal]

The issue isn't the parent role, that can be anything or nothing.

The problem is that the activedescendant is pointing to something that has no role at all. 

Comment 5

[Aaron Leventhal]

Basically, we're firing the event as you asked us to, but Window-Eyes/JAWS doesn't know what to do with a foo="blah". It needs a role of some kind on the individual list item that becomes active.

Comment 6

[Aaron Leventhal]

Please reopen if you still see an issue.

Otherwise, this is more of an issue to consider fixing on the AT end. They should say *something* when focus goes to something with an unknown role.