Voiceover on the Mac does not properly support aria-activedescendant to ensure accessibility for the blind. This is related to the prior bug: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167671 Which was said to be resolved, however it is not. Steps to reproduce: 1. Visit: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/combobox/examples/combobox-select-only/ 2. Attempt to read the available options using the up/down arrow keys with Voiceover running. 3. Confirm that nothing is announced to convey the currently active option. This is a critical stopper for blind Voiceover users, not just for the Combobox design pattern, but for all implementations that use aria-activedescendant to convey selection.
<rdar://problem/122590052>
We encountered this today - aria-activedescendent is broken. Tested on MacOS 14.5. These examples do not work with Safari: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/combobox/examples/grid-combo/ and https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/combobox/examples/combobox-autocomplete-list/
This problem is addressed in MacOs Sequoia 15. Please re-test with a recent build of MacOS 15.
Of note, macOS 15 Sequoia is in beta release, so you can preview this fix by downloading and installing the beta at developer.apple.com
Thanks to a kind soul (Roberto Perez) on Mastodon, it appears this is fixed: https://tweesecake.social/@rperez030/113058633044394970 (I am not in a position to run a beta OS on my Mac.)