1885278 - Missing screen magnifier support accessibility option at docs.google.com

Status: NEW

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P2)

Description

[Raul Bucata]

Attachment: 20240314_110420.mp4

Environment:
Operating System: Windows 10 PRO x64
Firefox version: Firefox Nightly 125.0a1 (2024-03-13) (64-bit)

Preconditions:
Clean profile

Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate to: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets
2. Perform account login
3. Open a sheet
4. Click on the "Tools" option located in the page header
5. From the drop-down menu click on the "Accessibility" option and observe the result

Expected Behavior:
The "Turn on screen magnifier support" option is present.

Actual Behavior:
The "Turn on screen magnifier support" option is missing.

Notes:

• Reproducible regardless of the status of ETP
• Reproducible on the latest build of Firefox Nightly and Release
• Works as expected using Chrome
• Reproducible on all sections on the page where the "Accessibility settings" option is present
• Screenrec attached
• Reproducible for other scrollbars on the page
• Issue found during WebCompat team [Top100] websites testing

Comment 1

[Frank Griffith Jr]

Confirmed still on Win11 x139 and x140.

Comment 2

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

They are using the UA string. I just confirmed this by changing Firefox's UA to chrome and the magnifier option appeared.

I don't think we can do anything on our end except petition them to change that and ask what features are missing in our browser that they would do this in the first place.

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay] from comment #2)

They are using the UA string. I just confirmed this by changing Firefox's UA to chrome and the magnifier option appeared.

Yup, same here. Just showing the checkbox is a separate problem from "does checking it actually do anything" though. :)

The "?" help-icon for the checkbox links to this support doc which unfortunately doesn't mention magnifiers/magnification at all.

But googling a bit, I found https://support.google.com/docs/answer/15931224 and found a way to make the checkbox do something in Chrome, where it has no effect in Firefox (which might be due to some missing browser feature/API which explains why they're hiding the checkbox from us).

STR to make the checkbox do something in Chrome:

1. In macOS Accessibility Settings, click "Zoom" and then "Advanced", and scroll to "Follow Focus" and change "Follow keyboard focus" to "Always"
2. View some Google Sheet in Chrome, and toggle the UI described in this bug (Tools|Accessibility|Turn on screen magnifier support)
3. Activate the macOS screen magnifier (option cmd 8). (For me, this turns the top ~20% of my screen into a zoomed-in visualization of the area that my mouse cursor is hovering.)
4. Zoom in a few times (option cmd + -- or really option cmd =)
5. Click a cell in your Google Sheet, and then use your keyboard arrows to move side to side or up and down.

• In Chrome, with the checkbox checked, the selected cell is always visible in the zoom area (as you navigate around with the keyboard). (This actually results in my mouse cursor being moved without me touching the trackpad/mouse -- macOS and/or Google-Sheets-in-Chrome apparently moves my mouse-cursor to keep it in the zoomed area, as the zoomed area follows my keyboard focus.)
• In Chrome, without the checkbox checked, the selected cell is not necessarily visible. (It stays focused on your mouse-cursor-position, and if your selected cell is too far away from that, then the selected cell simply isn't visible in the zoomed-in visualization.)
• Firefox behaves like Chrome without the checkbox checked, including when I spoof Chrome's UA string and check the checkbox.

Comment 4

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

OK, so it looks like there is work on our end too. I bet the mouse cursor movement is something the magnifier does? Either way, I think this is going to be a per-platform task. We need this reproduced on Windows as well.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

For completeness: Safari has the same experience as Firefox here (on macOS).

Specifically:

• The "Turn on screen magnifier support" checkbox is not present on Google Sheets in Safari.
• If I spoof a Chrome UA string to make the checkbox show up, and I check it, it doesn't seem to do anything (Google Sheets doesn't automagically work with the system "Follow keyboard focus", when I follow the steps from my previous comment in Safari).

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: video showing macOS "follow keyboard focus" magnifier behavior working with Google Sheets in Chrome

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #3)

• In Chrome, with the checkbox checked, the selected cell is always visible in the zoom area (as you navigate around with the keyboard). (This actually results in my mouse cursor being moved without me touching the trackpad/mouse -- macOS and/or Google-Sheets-in-Chrome apparently moves my mouse-cursor to keep it in the zoomed area, as the zoomed area follows my keyboard focus.)

Here's a video of how this^ behavior actually looks, to illustrate the feature / Chrome behavior here, when I follow the steps in comment 3.

In this video:

• I move my mouse cursor at first (and the zoomed area follows that movement)
• Then I change the keyboard focus from cell P1 to cell Q1 by pressing rightarrow (and the zoomed area moves to follow that movement, and it moves my mouse cursor along with it)
• The I change the keyboard focus leftwards by pressing leftarrow a bunch (and again, the zoomed area moves to follow that movement, and it moves my mouse cursor along with it)

(In contrast: in Chrome-without-"Turn on screen magnifier support"-checked and in Firefox/Safari, the zoomed area stays focused on where my mouse cursor is hovering, and my leftarrow/rightarrow keypresses end up selecting cells that might be outside that zoomed area.)

Comment 7

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

After speaking to GSuite devs it looks like we are providing a null rectangle for collapsed ranges. After a test here I can confirm that this makes the magnifier work in Firefox on MacOS.

I'll write a proper patch next.

Comment 8

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

See also bug 1951833 where I did this for UIA. I wonder whether we should be tweaking the cross-platform code to return a rect for empty ranges?

Comment 9

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Doing this properly for documents might also need a fix to bug 1966812.

Comment 10

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

Now that bug 1979969 is fixed the magnifier support in google sheets should work. I'll reach out about this to the gdocs team next week.

Comment 11

[Raul Bucata]

This is still an issue

Tested with:

Browser / Version: Firefox Nightly 144.0a1(2025-08-28)
Operating System: Windows 10

Comment 12

[Frank Griffith Jr]

Jumping in here Raul.....Eitan has reached out to the Google Team and they have requested some additional testing before they activate the changes on their end. Eitan will be completing that work and is coordinating with Google to get this fully operational. Thank you in advance for your patience.

Comment 13

[Raul Bucata]

Thanks for the update, Frank. Please let me know if help is needed to perform tests on the issue, following the updates from the Google team.

Comment 14

[Raul Bucata]

This is still an issue on the latest Nightly

Comment 15

[Raul Bucata]

This is still an issue on the latest Nightly

Comment 16

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

Hey Raul,

I added a dependent bug regarding how we expose roles for contenteditable in mac.
When it is fixed, and we have some testing done google will stop blocking Firefox.

I'll update this bug when there is more progress.

Comment 17

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

Another gap that does not allow us to support this: Chrome calls UAZoomChangeFocus when the text selection bounds move.