Slider does not work for touch+AT users

[patrickhlauke]

While the slider https://fast.design/docs/components/slider works well with AT and keyboard, it does currently not work in touch+AT scenarios. This is not a new problem...it's a problem that affects the ARIA 1.1 slider design pattern as well. In short: generally, touch+AT users that land on a slider (that announces itself as a native slider, e.g. with role="slider"), then AT will generally tell the user how to interact with the slider (on iOS/VO, "swipe up or down to change the value"; on Android/TalkBack "use the volume up/down ..."; etc). Of course, these types of interactions are not caught (and even using something like touch or pointer events at least for the swipe up/down won't work, as those gestures won't be passed to the page's JS as they'll be caught by AT).

See https://codepen.io/patrickhlauke/pen/byWPMX and w3c/aria-practices#8

[nicholasrice]

Awesome, thanks for the resources @patrickhlauke!

[nicholasrice]

My understanding from the resources linked above is that the platform is actually lacking the APIs to properly support a custom slider component.

The only known work-around (referenced in the issues above) is to render a visually hidden <input type="range"> that controls the control's value and correctly interprets touch + AT interactions.

[patrickhlauke]

@nicholasrice correct, at this point in time

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[chrisdholt]

It's come to my attention that with Safari 13.1 the issue with VoiceOver may be solved. I don't know if this has been fixed with Android/Talkback yet though. I'll see if we can test and follow up with more details.

[patrickhlauke]

I don't know if this has been fixed with Android/Talkback yet though

It hasn't, no (at least from my recent testing). For context, what VO does now is to effectively send "fake"/synthetic cursor up/down keyboard events when swiping up/down on a an element that exposes (either intrinsically or explicitly) a role of slider or scrollbar - see the User action events from Assistive Technologies section in the AOM explainer.

[chrisdholt]

I don't know if this has been fixed with Android/Talkback yet though

It hasn't, no (at least from my recent testing). For context, what VO does now is to effectively send "fake"/synthetic cursor up/down keyboard events when swiping up/down on a an element that exposes (either intrinsically or explicitly) a role of slider or scrollbar - see the User action events from Assistive Technologies section in the AOM explainer.

Thanks @patrickhlauke! This confirms exactly what I heard during a conversation on this today. I'm going to keep this open to track the reality that Android/Talkback isn't updated yet but perhaps that domino will fall soon.

[janechu]

Transferred this as it should pertain to https://github.com/microsoft/fluentui/tree/master/packages/web-components but due to microsoft/fast#6955 the issue is obsolete for FAST.