1912418 - Unable to Open the "Chat controls" and "Account Settings" submenus from the Anthropic Claude sidebar with Keyboard navigation if NVDA is enabled

Status: NEW

(Core :: Machine Learning, defect)

Description

[Rares Doghi, Desktop QA]

Attachment: nvdablocks.mp4

Found in

• Beta 130.0b3

Affected versions

• 131.0a1 (2024-08-08)
• Beta 130.0b3

Affected platforms

• Windows

Preconditions
Enable NVDA

Steps to reproduce

1. Reach about:preferences > Firefox labs and Enable the AI chatbot.
2. Select the Anthropic Claude from the Ai provider dropdown and Sign in.
3. Open the Anthropic sidebar and try to open the Anthropic Account settings using keyboard navigation.
4. Select any Chat and reach the Chat controls submenu.
5. Open the Chat Controls submenu using Space or Enter.

Expected result

• The user should be able to reach and Open the Chat controls and Account Settings menus using keyboard navigation when NVDA is enabled.

Actual result

• If NVDA is also enabled the Account Settings and Chat Controls submenus cannot be opened using space or enter keys.
  As soon as we turn off NVDA we can open those submenus without issues.

Regression range
Not a regression.

Comment 1

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Hi Jamie, do you know why would NVDA not open a menu when its menu button gets Space or Enter key, but the same keys would work with keyboard alone (when the NVDA is off)?

Comment 2

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

In browse mode, NVDA overrides enter and space to click the element rather than sending enter or space directly to the page. This is done because of the unfortunately large number of inaccessible clickable controls on the web which either aren't focusable or don't implement keyboard support correctly. I suspect this control supports keyboard activation with space and enter, but not via a mouse click. You will likely see the same issue with VoiceOver if you try to activate with VO+space. This implementation would also cause problems for any screen reader user trying to activate the control with a touch screen, since it doesn't make sense at all to send enter or space when activating via touch.

Comment 3

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Thank you for your input, Jamie!

Triaging it as access-S2 since it would block users of different assistive technologies and touch screen devices alike, per the comment above.

Comment 4

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Note: This appears to be an accessibility issue on the side of the chatbot service. Firefox team would need to pass this information to the provider, but until it is resolved, I'm marking this bug as stalled.