Bug 201887 – AX: content with aria-hidden attributes is read in Safari by VoiceOver

• Status: NEW
• Component: Accessibility

[Dean Hamack]

Created attachment 378999 [details]
Sample page showing bug

This bug was previously reported in bug #136071 and it still exists. Load the sample page in Safari and activate VoiceOver. Use the down arrow key to focus on the text content. The paragraph with the aria-hidden="true" attribute should not be read.

Safari 12.1.2 on MacOS Mojave 10.14.6

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/55456956>

[Patrick H. Lauke]

was about to post a new bug, but piggy-backing onto this: still an issue with Safari 14.0 on macOS Catalina 10.15.7 - noticed while testing the live demo http://edenspiekermann.github.io/a11y-dialog/example/ for https://github.com/edenspiekermann/a11y-dialog/

despite content being clearly contained inside an aria-hidden="true" block, it can be reached when using reading/cursor keys (see screenshot attached)

I have also observed the same problem (on a more complex page that uses a11y-dialog, but fundamentally does the same thing and hides everything but the dialog with aria-hidden="true") in iOS 14.0.1 / Safari (whatever version comes with that iOS version), where despite being in a dialog, user can swipe left/right and all of a sudden have content announced that is in the aria-hidden="true" page wrapping <div> (a few levels deep, but nonetheless a child element of a hidden container). the page in question is currently in staging, but will be in production (with the new a11y-dialog modal) next week https://www.babylonhealth.com/us/

[Patrick H. Lauke]

Created attachment 410937 [details]
Screenshot showing VO reading content behind modal overlay, and devtools showing it's in an aria-hidden="true" container

[Patrick H. Lauke]

see also various apparently related bugs https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=voiceover%20aria-hidden&list_id=6502575

such as https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161740

[Tomás García Gobet]

Can confirm it's still a thing in Safari 15.5.

[Andy Blum]

I have additional evidence of Safari/VO not parsing things correctly.

Here's a codepen showing some cards in a carousel component where the carousel sets cards that are hidden from view as `inert` as well as `aria-hidden="true"`.

https://codepen.io/andy-blum/pen/zYjOMVN

Here's a video walkthrough of the issue.

https://youtu.be/ToPG80suly8