Accessibility issues with display properties (not including display: contents)

[jsnkuhn]

Description

This is an incredibly detailed blog post by Adrian Roselli that is following fixes to accessibility issues with CSS display properties (mostly display: contents;). The proposal is for Interop2024 to highlight and track the work that is going on here:

https://adrianroselli.com/2022/07/its-mid-2022-and-browsers-mostly-safari-still-break-accessibility-via-display-properties.html

Specification

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-display/#the-display-properties

Open Issues

No response

Tests

No response

Current Implementations

• Blink
• Gecko
• WebKit

Standards Positions

No response

Browser bug reports

No response

Developer discussions

No response

Polls & Surveys

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Existing Usage

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Workarounds

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Accessibility Impact

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Privacy Impact

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Other

No response

[cookiecrook]

Related:

• role/label tests needed for display: contents interop-accessibility#60

[jensimmons]

Tests are needed for this to be a focus area. Does anyone have a pitch for a plan to get them created? How long will it take? Volunteers?

In the past, we've worked on improving test coverage through the end of the previous year — so in this case, we have until mid-December to get the tests written. But we should have a plan by the Oct 12 proposal revision deadline, so the plan is known and can be considered when evaluating whether/not this will be included in Interop 2024.

[cookiecrook]

There are a few potential paths I can see being achievable:

• Keep this a Focus Area, but limit the scope to display: contents as @jensimmons suggested.
• Keep the broader scope, but change it to a standalone Investigation and/or roll it into Accessibility Testing Investigation Area Report #459, the follow-on Accessibility investigation

[jsnkuhn]

Feeling a bit in over my head here. My purpose in adding this proposal was to highlight that Interop seem like a good place for the issues brought up in the linked article to be tracked. I'm not suggesting that I'm in any way qualified to take on/take over this task. Apologies for forgetting to ping @aardrian in the OP. They are a much better person to be answering the questions asked above.

[jensimmons]

Let's break this into two issues, so we can discuss each separately. I'll make a focus area proposal for display: contents, and we can keep using this issue to discuss the accessibility of all the other values of display.

[jensimmons]

Here's the proposal for display: contents. #568

[aardrian]

Apologies for forgetting to ping @aardrian in the OP. They are a much better person to be answering the questions asked above.

As @jensimmons noted, with the latest release of Safari (17) things are much better for my test cases (and excluding display: contents). I wrote that post over a year ago, well after the other browsers had mostly sorted their issues (barring a regression), though my updates show the history since. As I have been on holiday until last night, I was only just able to update it with desktop Safari 17 testing notes.

The remaining Safari non-contents issue is unlikely to be changed (lists with display properties losing semantics) though I defer to Jen or James on that.

[dholbert]

Let's break this into two issues, so we can discuss each separately. I'll make a focus area proposal for display: contents, and we can keep using this issue to discuss the accessibility of all the other values of display.

Could someone summarize what this issue here covers at this point, regarding issues with the other (non-contents) values of display?

I might be misunderstanding, but it sounds like @aardrian's comment above might be saying that the non-contents issues have been largely fixed ("things are much better for my test cases" / "other browsers had mostly sorted their issues"). If that's not the case, it'd be great to have a brief synopsis of what parts are still broken that this github-issue is proposing be covered in interop-2024.

(also: I assume the "remaining Safari non-contents issue [...] (lists with display properties losing semantics)" is https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259487 )

[jensimmons]

If that's not the case, it'd be great to have a brief synopsis of what parts are still broken that this github-issue is proposing be covered in interop-2024.

Agreed. It feels like at this point, there's no a clear list of what this focus area would cover.

Also, at the moment, we don't believe https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259487 is a report of a bug, but rather a (handy) report that the comment is out of date. We're looking into it, so aren't 100% sure yet... more later... but meanwhile, it does not look like this is an issue for Interop 2024 — especially since how precisely screenreaders are to handle lists is not standardized. Perhaps it should be, but that's another thing to discuss outside the Interop 2024 Focus Area proposal process.

[cookiecrook]

Agreed. It feels like at this point, there's no clear list of what this focus area would cover.

And typically test cases would be written for specific features before they are proposed as a Focus Area... For example, I hope to work on web-platform-tests/interop-accessibility#60 soon for #568 … I'm hopeful those PRs will show how easy it is to write role and label tests, so if there's an edge case not covered, anyone could add it.

[dandclark]

Thank you for proposing Accessibility issues with display properties (not including display: contents) for inclusion in Interop 2024.

We wanted to let you know that this proposal was not selected to be part of Interop this year.

We believe this proposal is too broad, and that as such, Interop 2024 is not the right venue to do this focus area.

For an overview of our process, see proposal selection. Thank you again for contributing to Interop 2024!

Edit: See @jensimmons 's comment below, these were folded into the combined Accessibility focus area.

Posted on behalf of the Interop team.

[jensimmons]

Actually this proposal IS part of Interop 2024. The tests for display: contents were written late, but in time to meet the deadline, so they've been folded into the Accessibility focus area.

They are in the CSS directory in this set of tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&aligned&view=interop&q=label%3Ainterop-2024-accessibility

[jensimmons]

Or, in case you don't want to drill down, the tests are here: https://wpt.fyi/results/css/css-display/accessibility/display-contents-role-and-label.html?label=master&label=experimental&aligned&view=interop&q=label%3Ainterop-2024-accessibility

[jensimmons]

That's 138 subtests for display: contents alone.