1894535 - Change the moz-message-bar role to alert to ensure it's announced when visibility is changed

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: UI Widgets, defect)

Description

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

This component is used in the Selection Translation panel and the errors are not announced by a screen reader, because the <moz-message-bar> is HTML hidden until the error state - and the live region (which status role creates) is not expected to be announced on visibility change. But role alert is the special case on the Accessibility API/platform side and it would be announced to a screen reader user, without being focused.

That the role change should be a fail-safe option for all message bars. I tried it locally on macOS and Win11 and screen readers are happily doing what’s needed on the translations panel and on the about:addons where the bar is visible by default. Since this may be a more wide spread use case (un-hiding the error message dynamically when the error state is triggered) and thus I thought to bring this up for the component-level update.

Comment 1

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Attachment: Bug 1894535 - Change the moz-message-bar role to alert to ensure it's announced when visibility is changed. r=#extension-reviewers,#reusable-components-reviewers!,nordzilla

This component is used in the Selection Translation panel and the errors are not announced by a screen reader, because the <moz-message-bar> is HTML hidden until the error state - and the live region (which status role creates) is not expected to be announced on visibility change. But role alert is the special case on the Accessibility API/platform side and it would be announced to a screen reader user, without being focused.

Comment 2

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/e1684cedfdbb
Change the moz-message-bar role to alert to ensure it's announced when visibility is changed. r=nordzilla,extension-reviewers,reusable-components-reviewers,translations-reviewers,hjones,willdurand

Comment 3

[Cosmin Sabou [:CosminS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/e1684cedfdbb