552964 - Changing focus to the new tabs toolbar results in very verbose speech output with screen readers.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

This is necessary because of bug 347930.
The xul:tabs element has an @tooltip attribute pointing to a xul:tooltip element. We need to make sure the tooltip text becomes the accessible name for the xul:tabs accessible, and the labelling/labelledby relation must be set.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

The tooltip repeats the tab's label. What do you need it for?

Comment 2

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> The tooltip repeats the tab's label. What do you need it for?

This was an idea to get a name like "browser tabs" for the tablist accessible, so users know they're in the toolbar that contains the browser tabs. With the changes from bug 347930, screen readers now announce a focus hierarchy that indicates that there should be a name associated with that tab list. But instead of using the tooltip (if this is always representing the tab the mouse hovers over), it would also be OK if we added an aria-label with a localizable string.

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Do we actually want the tablist to be announced or would it be better to skip it?

Comment 4

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Do we actually want the tablist to be announced or would it be better to skip
> it?

I don't think we want to skip it. Right now, speech is very verbose but unspecific. When I change focus to the tabs toolbar onto one of the tabs, NVDA speaks something like "toolbar, tabs, 'Thank you for using a pre-release version of Firefox' tab." In Firefox 3.6 or prior to Wednesday's Minefield build, the "toolbar" announcement was not present, and the "tabs" announcement was more aligned directly to the actual tab. It felt more natural.

If it said something like "Browser tabs toolbar, tabs, " followed by the actual tab, this would be even more verbose, but would again make sense since it ould unambiguously indicate where one is. The way it is now, it feels odd to me.

Adjusted the bug summary to better reflect the problem, since the original idea makes the least sense after explanation in comment #1.

Comment 5

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

This has been fixed along the way, saying "browser tabs" now. Closing as WFM.