Bug 163658 – AX: link to container with fragment identifier that has tabindex results in container not being read and ignored by VoiceOver

• Status: NEW
• Component: Accessibility

[Patrick H. Lauke]

Created attachment 292058 [details]
Test case

Due to focus management issues in some browsers, one common approach for skip links is to link to a container with an id that also has an explicit tabindex attribute, making it focusable.

<a href="#content">Skip to main content</a>
...
<div id="content" tabindex="-1">...</div>

However, it seems that this sort of (fairly common) skip link pattern breaks in iOS10/VoiceOver/Safari. Specifically, it seems that if the target container has a tabindex attribute, VoiceOver does move the accessibility focus to the container, but announces nothing. But more worryingly, it then seems to ignore that entire target container - swiping left/right simply jumps over that container as if it wasn't in the document at all (though if you swipe long enough to get into the Safari UI and back, it seems to usually sort itself out again).

This is making fairly common skip links (for instance, those used in Bootstrap-based sites, if they follow the advice given in the BS documentation) completely unusable.

See attached test case and the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUlSav9Nm_4 (the first skip link works, but the other two skip links - to a <div id="..." tabindex="0"> and <div id="..." tabindex="-1"> - exhibit this broken behavior)

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/28844157>

[Patrick H. Lauke]

Possibly worth noting: the reason why authors do set explicit tabindex is, among other things, this https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116046 (to force keyboard interaction with skip links to work correctly)

[James Craig]

Relating bug 158430

[Keegan]

I am finding that even if the target does not have a tabindex attribute, VoiceOver highlights the target but does not read it, and then it ignores the target container completely.

Test case: https://codepen.io/keeganstreet/pen/VWyGyv

[Brent Fulgham]

This is actually being tracked under:
<rdar://39953581>