Open Bug 1949861 Opened 27 days ago Updated 27 days ago

Windows Narrator can control previous tab despite visual transition to new tab

Categories

(Core :: Disability Access APIs, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Disability Access APIs
Platform:
Desktop
Windows 11
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Tracking Flags:
Tracking Status
firefox137 --- affected

People

(Reporter: nlapre, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

STR:

  1. Turn on UIA support in about:config; set accessibility.uia.enable to true.
  2. Launch Windows Narrator
  3. Open two tabs, ideally tabs with interesting and distinctive features
  4. Place your mouse pointer on the tab that’s not currently open (such that, if you clicked, Firefox would switch tabs)
  5. Navigate around on the current page with Narrator
  6. Change tabs by clicking the mouse pointer, while Narrator is in the middle of reading something (must not be idle)
  7. Try to navigate the switched-to tab with Narrator controls

Expected: Narrator will navigate through the new tab.
Actual: Narrator navigates through the previous tab.

If you switch tabs with the keyboard alone, this doesn't happen (the active document switches correctly).

Edge also shows this problem.

Blocks: uia

Two questions:

  1. Does Narrator report anything at all when you click to switch tabs?
  2. Can you reproduce this with NVDA with Firefox UIA disabled? It's weird to me that this would only impact UIA, so I'm wondering whether we're missing a focus event here or something like that. That said, I couldn't reproduce this myself with NVDA, though I was simulating a mouse click which... might be different somehow?
Flags: needinfo?(nlapre)

I found something else while re-testing this: Narrator seemingly must be in the middle of reading some text while you switch tabs in order for the bug to appear. If you click the mouse while Narrator is idle, focus seems to switch appropriately. The other thing I've noticed, somewhat crucially, is that this is also a problem in Edge. I'll add these facts to the bug description.

To your questions:

  1. No, it just keeps doing whatever it was doing on the old tab. It doesn't append any utterances to the end of its speech queue.
  2. No, I haven't been able to reproduce this with NVDA on Gecko IA2.
Flags: needinfo?(nlapre)

Also: I can reproduce this bug on Firefox with Narrator with native UIA support off, via the same steps.

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