Aria-selected is not narrated for the gridcell

[kolaps33]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate to the example: https://codesandbox.io/s/pqrni?module=/example.js
2. Navigate into "Select a date. edit"
3. Open date picker and choose any day different from today (day is selected and picker closed)
4. Open date picker again and navigated to the day which you selected in the previous step
5. observe narration

Actual behavior:

For example, when 20th of January was selected narration was:
"January 20, 2021 row 5"

Expected behavior:

it narrates "selected" state as well
Expecting this narration, because:

• JAWS narrates it
  and
• it should be supported by aria documenation:
  https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#aria-selected

Snippet of HTML of element which is focused:
<button role="gridcell" aria-selected="true" data-aa-class="DatepickerCalendarCellButton" class="ui-datepicker__calendarcellbutton il iz ja bg bh jb jc jd je iu ip iv ir jf jg jh ji is as bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx by bz ca gs gt gu gv cf cg ch ci cj ck cl cm cn co cp cq cr cs ct cu cv gw gx gy gz da db dc dd de df dg dh di dj jn jm iw ix" aria-label="January 20, 2021" tabindex="0">20</button>

System configuration

NVDA installed

NVDA version: 2020.3

Windows version:

10.0.19042

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

Chrome Version 87.0.4280.88 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Other information about your system:

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

no haven't

If addons are disabled, is your problem still occuring?

no addons enabled

Did you try to run the COM registry fixing tool in NVDA menu / tools?

no

[msftedad]

Hi Team, is there any update on this bug?

[Adriani90]

cc: @SaschaCowley

[SaschaCowley]

This is because of bugs in Firefox and Chromium.

• Firefox: Firefox assumes the focus is also the selection, even though the spec says "If any DOM element in the widget is explicitly marked as selected, the user agent MUST NOT convey implicit selection for the widget." @jcsteh are you aware of this issue/are there plans to fix it?
• Chromium: Chromium doesn't expose State.SELECTABLE on any but the selected gridcell, so, while it doesn't eroniously link the focus and selection, it doesn't give NVDA the context necessary to report that the other dates are not selected.

[jcsteh]

* **Firefox**: Firefox assumes the focus is also the selection, even though [the spec](https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.2/#state_prop_def) says "If any DOM element in the widget is explicitly marked as selected, the user agent MUST NOT convey implicit selection for the widget." @jcsteh are you aware of this issue/are there plans to fix it?

I wasn't aware of this; thanks.

1. Isn't this a different bug to the one described here, though? That would cause "selected" to be reported when it shouldn't, rather than "selected" not being reported when it should.
2. The spec has actually changed since then. Browsers now shouldn't calculate an implicit selected state for gridcells at all:

   The option, tab, and treeitem roles permit user agents to provide an implicit value for aria-selected when specified conditions are met. User agents MUST NOT provide an implicit value for aria-selected in any other circumstance.

[jcsteh]

I filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894436 for gridcell.

I also filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894437 for option, tab and treeitem. However, I see that Chromium has the same bug and I honestly wonder whether the spec needs to be changed here because supporting that rule is almost certainly going to cause hideous performance problems in some cases.

[jcsteh]

I see the selected state isn't being reported for the selected date in Firefox when it's focused, but I'm struggling to understand why. Even if Firefox is incorrectly exposing the selected state when it shouldn't in some cases, why should that prevent the selected state from being reported? It's... very confusing.

[SaschaCowley]

I think this is because NVDA doesn't report "selected" for the selected item in single-select controls. Though honestly I find NVDA's reporting of "selected" and "not selected" to be irregular and confusing.

[jcsteh]

The fact that it incorrectly reports "selected" when you move to a (not selected) date would suggest otherwise. Also, this isn't based on single or multi select controls; it's based on the role. If I'm reading the code correctly, selected should get reported for all selectable table cells unconditionally.

[jcsteh]

Ah, this is deliberate and based on the selected item count. If only 1 item is selected, the selected state isn't reported.
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/bf96860d561aa6c1e03f0cbd286be9b04587cb92/source/speech/speech.py#LL636
b02ed2d. This was done to prevent "selected" from being reported for every cell in Google Sheets; see #8879.

[SaschaCowley]

The fact that it incorrectly reports "selected" when you move to a (not selected) date would suggest otherwise.

...

Ah, this is deliberate and based on the selected item count. If only 1 item is selected, the selected state isn't reported.

Yup, so because Firefox is reporting the focused item as selected, if there is a cell with aria-selected=true, and it is not the focused cell, the selection count is 2 and we hear "selected". So reporting of the actually selected date is working correctly, but reporting of non-selected dates is not.

[SaschaCowley]

We could try working around this in NVDA by checking if any selection widgets contain an explicit selection, and if so removing the selected state from any children without aria-selected set, but this will potentially be quite expensive, depending on implementation specifics that I'm not sure of off the top of my head.

[jcsteh]

We'll fix the Firefox bug. But my point is that this won't solve the reporter's original request:

Expected behavior:
it narrates "selected" state as well

It explicitly won't say selected because the selection count will now be 1 instead of 2. So we'd be fixing a bug, yes, but it would be a different issue to the one that's reported here. The issue reported here, as I understand it, is intended behaviour (not reporting "selected").

[SaschaCowley]

I interpreted 'it narrates "selected" state as well' to mean that the selection state is accurately reported, not necessarily that "selected" is spoken. We closed a (somewhat) similar issue (#16449) yesterday as expected behaviour.

If your interpretation is correct, I personally think that a new issue should be created, as the problem applies to more than just ARIA gridcells.

[jcsteh]

I'll leave that call up to you. For what it's worth, I've submitted a patch to fix the Firefox gridcell issue.

[jcsteh]

The Firefox gridcell bug has been fixed in Firefox Nightly and the fix will be included in the Firefox 127 release.

[alexstine]

Anyone think maybe the aria-selected="true" could also be effected in this multiselect example?

https://dequelabs.github.io/combobo/demo/

When aria-selected="false" is set, it is not initially announced until it is toggled on and then back off. I can open another issue if not but it is reproducible in both Chrome and Firefox.

[Adriani90]

In Firefox this now seems to be reported properly. Not selected dates are reported as "not selected" and the selected date is reported without any selection atribute which is clear enough that a selection has been performed.
In Chromium canary 133, neither of both selected or not selected is reported.
I filled
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/380411642

@alexstine could you please open a new issue with your behavior, explaining exactly what happens? When do you exactly set aria selected? I suspect this happens after you press enter or when you click on an item. Before that no aria selected is set at all so NVDA cannot report anything.

[alexstine]

@Adriani90 You are correct. Before a selection is made with the enter key, aria-selected attribute is not present in the option div nodes. That is most likely the issue here, I'll see if I can reach out to the maintainer to fix this example. I assume this may work, needs testing, if the aria-selected="false" attribute is set initially.

[Adriani90]

Result on the chromium bug, it seems it is an NVDA issue. NVDA reports the selected value only when using ctrl+alt+arrow keys in browse mode.
But it doesn't report the selected / unselected items in the date picker when using arrow keys in focus mode.

cc: @SaschaCowley the Chromium issue has been closed since it is NVDA specific.

Note that in Firefox, NVDA announces the currently selected item withut atribute, and the unselected items as "unselected" when using arrow keys in focus mode. This is expected behavior in Chrome as well.

Is Chrome not exposing the right things here?

[SaschaCowley]

As @jcsteh has pointed out, this is due to incorrect authoring. All selectable gridcells have to have aria-selected set in ARIA 1.3. Closing as invalid.