2056347 - Weather widget [a11y] Missing alternative text

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Claire Joeckel]

Attachment: Screenshot 2026-07-20 120050.png

Impacted Section/Element

HNT

Steps to Reproduce

Open DevTools. Inspect the "Weather" widget while its size is set to small. While using a screen reader, navigate into the widget. Compare the visible label to what the screen reader announces.

Expected Behavior

The screen reader announces all of the content visually presented in the widget, including the current weather conditions that are visually represented by a weather icon (for example "Sunny").

Actual Behavior

All information presented visually, except the conditions represented by the weather icon, are exposed to screen reader users.

User Impact

Screen reader users do not receive the current weather conditions because the weather icon lacks a text alternative.

WCAG 2.2 References

• WCAG 1.1.1 - Non-text Content

Recommendations

Apply role="img" and an aria-label indicating the conditions, e.g., <span class="weatherIcon iconId1 role="img" aria-label="sunny"></span>.

Testing Environment

Any

Assistive Technology Used

Any

Further Reference

• WebAIM: Alternative Text

Severity

3-Moderate

Comment 1

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

S2 because there is information which is available to some users but not others.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:thecount, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[Maxx Crawford [:maxx]]

FYI - This should be a straight forward fix. We have a hidden element, weather-info-description that contains the conditions string in text. We can add that prop to an ARIA-attr, etc.

Comment 4

[Reem Hamoui]

Attachment: Bug 2056347 - Add weather forecast description to Weather widget's small size for screenreaders. r=#home-newtab-wattle-reviewers-rotation

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/ab6a13cbbb70
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/475881bf8dda
Add weather forecast description to Weather widget's small size for screenreaders. r=mconley

Comment 6

[Serban Stanca [:SerbanS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/475881bf8dda