Add aria-live assertive for recording countdown

[microbit-grace]

No description provided.

[github-actions]

Preview build will be at
https://review-createai.microbit.org/countdown-live/

[microbit-robert]

This kind of works and kind of doesn't. NVDA is too busy reading out things from previous focus, current focus, and the fact that a dialog has appeared. It's just too slow to be useful. It continues to read 3, 2, 1 etc, but it's well behind what is changing on screen. By the time it says "recording", the recording has practically finished.

The progress bar has some built in aria-live features. For NVDA it's an incredibly irritating noise starting low in pitch and getting higher until it stops.

Windows narrator does a slightly better job. It is busy reading that a close button is focussed, misses the start of the countdown, but keeps pace. It's normally "2 , 1..." or "1, recording". It also doesn't produce a noise during the progress dialog transition.

I don't really know the best way to fix this. There could well be options in the screen reader settings that would improve the experience.

One thing we don't do at the moment is tell you when the recording stops. You only get a sense that it does because a different button becomes focussed when the dialog closes.

[microbit-grace]

This kind of works and kind of doesn't. NVDA is too busy reading out things from previous focus, current focus, and the fact that a dialog has appeared. It's just too slow to be useful. It continues to read 3, 2, 1 etc, but it's well behind what is changing on screen. By the time it says "recording", the recording has practically finished.

The progress bar has some built in aria-live features. For NVDA it's an incredibly irritating noise starting low in pitch and getting higher until it stops.

Windows narrator does a slightly better job. It is busy reading that a close button is focussed, misses the start of the countdown, but keeps pace. It's normally "2 , 1..." or "1, recording". It also doesn't produce a noise during the progress dialog transition.

I don't really know the best way to fix this. There could well be options in the screen reader settings that would improve the experience.

Hmm.. sounds like the experience for NVDA and windows narrator are different to Mac voice over experience. 🤔 Below is a video for what I experience using the Mac voice over.

Screen.Recording.2024-10-10.at.13.21.31.mov

I'm not sure what's the best way to fix this too.

[microbit-grace]

One thing we don't do at the moment is tell you when the recording stops. You only get a sense that it does because a different button becomes focussed when the dialog closes.

Maybe adding a toast that says "Recording added" or something along those lines could hint to the user that the recording has stopped? Suggestions welcomed

[microbit-robert]

Well, the recording countdown works beautifully with Mac voice over.

[microbit-matt-hillsdon]

Parking this one until we can try out in person and discuss next week.

[microbit-robert]

You can hit the NVDA key + spacebar when the dialog opens to stop it reading out the dialog info and just listen to the aria-live region which then works pretty well. I want to explore NVDA settings / modes to see if we can suggest something that will work well for the recording process.

[microbit-robert]

You can hit the NVDA key + spacebar when the dialog opens to stop it reading out the dialog info and just listen to the aria-live region which then works pretty well. I want to explore NVDA settings / modes to see if we can suggest something that will work well for the recording process.

Seems like you can just hit CTRL when the dialog opens to interupt NVDA, it will then announce the countdown. This is not a very practical fix as it requires relatively quick reactions and fine motor skills.