ARIA Deep Dive - Dialogs

• Past
• Confirmed

Postponing this until 07 April as multiple folks can't make March 31.

https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues/1708

Agenda

https://github.com/whatwg/html/wiki/dialog--initial-focus,-a-proposal

The discussion has been very valuable. Our end goal is to pull improvements from this discussion into HTML and ARIA specs and and implementations. ARIA and HTML should be aligned, such that <dialog> and role=dialog result in similiar behavior.

All browsers are currently shipping some form of initial focus in dialog, using some version/concept of "first focusable descendant". Firefox was satisfied with the direction of the discussion, in terms of improving existing behavior, and as a result, they started shipping in Firefox 98. Safari 15.4 and Chrome/Edge already ship as well.

The discussion needs to continue on these issues we uncovered:

AT support:

• Should modeless dialogs be treated as a landmark
• Should platform APIs provide a dialog open event
• Should platform APIs provide a means to determine whether a dialog is modal or non-modal? HTML-AAM 377
• Should guidance be provided on what screen readers should announce when a dialog opens (they tend to read up to the current focus, but have slightly different heuristics)

Improving keyboard accessibility of non-modal dialogs:

• Tab trapping Should <dialog> actually create a "control group" for focus? whatwg/html#2171
• Dialog closing keystrokes such as Escape: Enable support for<dialog> to be dismissed using the back button whatwg/html#5667
• Pane switching keystrokes such as F6 (or Ctrl+F6 on Mac): Clarify UX (keyboard) and further a11y expectations for modeless dialogs whatwg/html#7707

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