1905631 - Unable to reach the ChatGPT engine menu using keyboard navigation

Status: NEW

(Core :: Machine Learning, defect, P3)

Description

[Rares Doghi, Desktop QA]

Attachment: jUMPoVER.mp4

Found in

• Nightly 129.0a1

Affected versions

• Nightly 129.0a1 (2024-06-28)

Affected platforms

• All

Steps to reproduce

1. Reach about:preferences#experimental page.
2. Enable the AI Chat integration.
3. Select the ChatGPT AI provider.
4. Reach the AI chat Sidebar using Keyboard navigation.
5. Reach the ChatGPT engine dropdown.

Expected result

• The user should be able to reach the ChatGPT engine selection dropdown using keyboard navigation.

Actual result

• The user is unable to reach that Chat GPT engine selection dropdown.

Regression range
Not a regression.

Comment 1

[Ania]

I can reproduce the same issue in the latest Chrome and Edge, so this might just an annoyance we cannot really fix, but might want to report to Open AI, as it's pretty critical for screen reader users.

Comment 2

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

This is an access-S2 issue that makes parts of the UI, specifically an opportunity to choose an engine, inaccessible for users of assistive technologies to use. While some assistive technology (i.e. modern screen readers or switch input software or speech-to-text software) would provide some workarounds to activate this control, besides some novice users and/or users with cognitive disabilities not being aware of these workarounds and these workarounds taking extra time and physical and mental effort to complete (i.e. calling a mouse grid with a voice control), keyboard-only users without assistive technology running would not have any access to this feature at all.

Making this control a <button> and to follow the ARIA Menubutton design pattern should help resolving this issue. Ensuring that the controls are focusable with keyboard, provide appropriate programmatic role and, when applicable, state is crucial for reliable operation.

As Ania pointed out in the comment above, this appear to be an accessibility issue on the side of the chatbot service. Firefox team will need to pass this information to the provider, but until it is resolved, we could mark this bug as stalled.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is set to S3. However, the accessibility severity is higher, .
:tarek, could you consider increasing the severity?

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