This is the macOS version of https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259156, which was filed to be iOS specific. Using macOS Venture 13.4 and Safari 16.5 with VoiceOver on a site that uses aria-description (Example: https://a11ysupport.io/tests/html/aria/aria-description.html) results in the description not getting read out. For the text field, "more content available" is read out rather than the description. The text content doesn't read the description, nor does it provide context that there is a description. I would expect that aria-description would have the same readout behavior as aria-describedby, in a similar way that aria-label has the same readout behavior as aria-labelledby.
<rdar://problem/114596381>
This is a bug on Mac OS 14 Sonoma and Safari 17 as well. The Accessible Description should automatically announce. Many web forms rely on aria-describedby to programmatically associate form field helper text and error text. VO users should not have to dig around for this important content. Any updates on a fix?
This may only be an issue with Text Inputs as I'm not able to replicate the issue with other form fields e.g. Radio, Select, Button, Checkbox
Here is a reduced test: https://cdpn.io/pen/debug/poqQRQa/b71a4e4bdedd09281a6b5380f2014483 Following up on this, "more content available" is not even announced by VO in MacOS 14 Sonoma and Safari 17. The Accessible Description is not announced at all regardless of verbosity settings. VO users can use "Control + Option + Command + /" to access this content but there is no indication the description is available to them. Accessible Description as computed in Chrome: https://app.screencast.com/yRlegE5yXdtiR
This issue was filed to address the bug in `aria-description`. The latest comments on this issue are talking about `aria-describedby` in Safari 17. However, they may be related since it looks like Safari 17 aligned exposure of the two and chose the more verbose one: > Fixed aria-describedby to be equivalent to aria-description and override it when both are present. (108386295) Ref: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-17-release-notes
Tnx Adrian! I think you are onto something there with that release note. Nice find!
I filed a new issue specifically for `aria-described by`: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=262895
This is a macOS VoiceOver implementation issue, so needs to be fixed in that project. Going to handle the bug there rather than through bugzilla