1672694 - Gmail: When navigating the inbox with the arrow keys, VoiceOver cannot track the focus

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Disability Access APIs, defect, P1)

Description

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Gmail's inbox can be navigated using the arrow keys. Once focus lands in the table, arrowing up and down gives information such as importance, sender, subject, date, and a preview automatically.

Steps:

1. Load Gmail.
2. Find the "Skip to content" link and press Enter on it.
3. Press Tab once more to actually focus the table.
4. Arrow down.
   • Expected: VoiceOver should speak the newly highlighted message information. It does so in Chrome.
   • Actual: VoiceOver tries to, then gets interrupted, and only reads the date.
5. Press UpArrow.
   • Expected: VoiceOver reads the info for the top-most message.
   • Actual: VoiceOver says "Conversations".

This is reproducible 100% of the time. It makes it impossible to reliably use Gmail.

Comment 1

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

When focus changes we send a trailing caret move event which sends a platform AXSelectedTextChanged. VoiceOver in turn sets focus on the body, which sends the VO cursor to the doc.

Looks like both Chrome and Safari don't send AXSelectedTextChanged events when arrowing. At least Safari seems to so so when an element is styled user-select: none. This makes sense. We should have our underutilized SELECTABLE_TEXT state respect that styling.

Comment 2

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

Attachment: Bug 1672694 - P1: Query layout for selectable text state. r?morgan!,Jamie!

The SELECTABLE_TEXT state is currently under-utilized and probably wrong, since it simply relies on testing if a hypertext has any text. A more correct reflection of the state should be taken from layout's IsSelectable method.

Note, even if an element is styled user-select: none, the text will still be keyboard selectable if it is editable (eg. input or contenteditable), so we should consider that SELECTABLE_TEXT.

Comment 3

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

Attachment: Bug 1672694 - P2: Don't fire AXSelectedTextChanged if target is not selectable. r=morgan

This causes VoiceOver to mess with AXFocused and as a result redirect the VO cursor.

Depends on D95783

Comment 4

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b222e4ff438f
P1: Query layout for selectable text state. r=morgan,Jamie
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/0f340ea56805
P2: Don't fire AXSelectedTextChanged if target is not selectable. r=morgan

Comment 5

[Razvan Maries]

Backed out for perma failures.

Push with failure: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=autoland&resultStatus=testfailed%2Cbusted%2Cexception&revision=0f340ea5680522e218aec00b242b224490b0dda1&failure_classification_id=2

Log: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=320667617&repo=autoland&lineNumber=3915

Lint failure: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=320667175&repo=autoland&lineNumber=500

Backout: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/55cb76d04796bbc54e15dfc0e85fdb3812b98b15

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/26f19aaba8e2
P1: Query layout for selectable text state. r=morgan,Jamie,yzen

Comment 7

[Cristian Brindusan [:cbrindusan]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/26f19aaba8e2

Comment 8

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Actually, this is not fixed yet, since Part 2 still awaits a linting fix and subsequent landing. Reopening.

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/500b28bb7142
P2: Don't fire AXSelectedTextChanged if target is not selectable. r=morgan

Comment 10

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/500b28bb7142

Comment 11

[Cristian Fogel [:cfogel]]

Confirmed the issue with 83.0.
Fix verified with 84.0b2, 85.0a1 (2020-11-19) on macOS 10.15.