Bug 218309 – AX: aria-selected state not announced for ARIA treeitem instances

• Component: Accessibility
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Todd Kloots]

Created attachment 412578 [details]
Screen recording navigating an ARIA tree using VoiceOver with Safari

Steps to reproduce:

1. Start VoiceOver
2. Go to https://codepen.io/toddlr/pen/XWrGrGV
3. Move focus to the ARIA tree example
4. Notice VoiceOver does not announce the aria-selected state for the selected ARIA treeitem


What is the expected result?
VoiceOver should announce the aria-selected state for the ARIA treeitem

What happens instead of that?
VoiceOver does not announce the aria-selected state for the ARIA treeitem

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/70783545>

[Todd Kloots]

Created attachment 412584 [details]
Screen shot of the ARIA tree example with the Accessibility Inspector

I believe this could be a bug in VoiceOver. When examining the selected ARIA treeitem instance in the Accessibility Inspector, the inspector shows it as selected.

[Todd Kloots]

As of Mac OS 11.4 aria-selected is announced by VoiceOver BUT only if interacting using VO- navigation. If you navigate using only arrow keys WITH VO- modifiers aria-selected is not announced.

[Brent Fulgham]

The fix for this issue was needed outside the WebKit project, therefore this is being resolved as 'Moved'.

This should now be fixed in shipping software.

[Sommer Panage]

Seeing different but problematic behavior in 13.1 Beta (22C5044e), see attached video. When cell selection changes, VO continues to announce the previously selected cell as selected. This is a regression from the progress made in Monterey (12.6.1).

[Sommer Panage]

Created attachment 463547 [details]
Select state not updating

[Todd Kloots]

Verified this as fixed. The root cause was the repro example (https://codepen.io/toddlr/pen/XWrGrGV) didn't implement aria-selected per the spec (https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.2/#aria-selected). 

Specifically, per the spec: "Single-selection containers where the currently focused item is not selected. The selection normally follows the focus, and is managed by the user agent."

So, if an ARIA tree uses aria-selected in a single-selection mode it needs to explicitly declare all unselected treeitems using aria-selected=false else VoiceOver will (per the spec) assume focus and selection are in sync.