Chrome M89 Accessibility Engineering Release Notes

[Kara Booker]

Hi everyone,

Chrome version 89 comes with a number of accessibility fixes and improvements across platforms. Here are some of the notable updates in this milestone, with links to relevant bugs and code changes when available for reference. 

Highlights

• Live Caption is now available on Chrome on Mac and Windows.  See this Keyword blog post for a full overview of the feature. 

All platforms

• Added ability to recolor the default tab favicon if the original has low minimum contrast. (Change 2587578, Bug 1153079)

• Fixed a crash in chrome://history with accessibility enabled. (Change 2584610, Bug 1153576)

• Added ability to notify screen readers when aria-current changes. (Change 2500242, Bug 1099323, Bug 1141139, Bug 1067209)

• Grids are now exposed correctly when grid rows are included with aria-owns instead of via DOM children. (Change 2568365, Bug 1150481)

• Fixed a difficult to reproduce bug with content disappearing from web pages (notable examples include Youtube and Gmail. (Change 2567228, Bug 1141106)

• DevTools

• Made breakpoints keyboard accessible in the sources sidebar pane. (Change 2565403)

• Made “add new context menu” in data grid keyboard accessible. (Change 2616081)

• Screen readers now announce count and position for items in the suggest box. (Change 2582503)

• Added labels to sidebar tree in applications view and columns that are checked in a Datagrid. (Change 2586050, Change 2569883)

• Fixed focus rectangle alignment of ATs and PDFs. (Change 2551465, Bug 1150660)

• Screen readers now announce date headings in chrome history page. (Change 2594173, Bug 1100393)

• Fixed a bug which prevented screen readers announcing subtitles in accounts & sync menu. (Change 2593100, Bug 1078580)

• Improved the Bookmarks selection screen reader announcements. (Change 2566595, Bug 1142080)

• Added accessible label to Chrome://flags search field. (Change 2538531, Bug 1083307)

• Insecure download dialogue now announces itself to screen readers. (Change 2606669, Bug 1131084)

Chrome on Linux

• Made checkboxes on history page ARIA-compliant, this fixes a bug where screen readers would not announce the checkbox’s text description. (Change 2584502, Bug 1152721)

• Improved accessibility of focused widgets which have been incorrectly marked as hidden due to authoring error. (Change 2521570, Bug 1144707)

• Setting selection outside of visible area now causes scroll. (Change 2573975, Bug 993456)

Chrome on Mac

• VoiceOver focus now stays in sync with browser focus, if the user has chosen this setting. (Change 2551814)

• Report heading level same way that Safari does, via DisclosureLevel. (Change 2576418, Bug 1155881)

• Fixed some issues with the bookmarks bar by fixing roles, groups and role descriptions. (Change 2605468, Change 2605467, Change 2588893,  Bug 1097760)

• Exposed posinset and setsize to VoiceOver for native widgets. (Change 2544962, Bug 1068752)

• Autofill name/address list item number is now announced with VoiceOver. (Change 2545285, Bug 1067752)

• Mac, accounts & sync: announce dialog title and subtitle. (Change 2600976, Bug 1078580, Bug 1161166)

• Automatically enable accessibility when VoiceControl is in use. (Change 2538257, Bug 1143047)

• When focus moves to form inputs, the input label and type are now announced. (Change 2512913, Bug 1127421)

• Made disabled elements visible to VoiceOver. (Change 2536088, Bug 1067760)

Chrome on Windows

• NVDA now reads all menu items with the "read line" command. (Change 2553003, Bug 1098528)

• Fixed an echoing issue with Jaws when editing a Google sheets. (Change 2583013, Bug 1137486)

• Assigned aria attributes to cr-customize-themes, to ensure the color labels are announced in a local profile creation flow with JAWS. (Change 2591127, Bug 1158409)

• Improved screen reader feedback when navigating the Task Manager table on Windows. (Change 2578706, Bug 1078623)

• Implemented UIA TableView Cell navigation. (Change 2533837, Bug 1148097)

• Allow traversing disabled menu items with arrow keys in accessibility mode. (Change 2551799, Bug 1067760)

Chrome OS

• ChromeVox

• ChromeVox now announces if apps are paused or blocked when they are focused in the app list, shelf, or search box. (Change 2545908, Bug 1144384)

• Ensure dialogs in OOBE trap focus. (Change 2590371, Bug 1157982)

• ChromeVox voice switching now respects the user's preferred voices. (Change 2617511, Bug 1121592)

• ChromeVox will be less repetitive when navigating through content on the first screen in out of box setup. (Change 2566495, Bug 1154009)

• Fixed a bug causing Chromevox to stall when expanding cells with dropdown list boxes in google sheets (Change 2558745, Bug 1101496)

• Improved ChromeVox voicing for expanded select elements. (Change 2602113, Bug 1161524)

• Performance improvements for the eSpeak text to speech engine.  (Change 2515786, Bug 1146417, Bug 1146418, Bug 1146420)

• Bug 1146417: Add new bindings for text-to-speech playback. (Fixed)

• Bug 1146418: Espeak js keeps processing old audio data from previous utterances. (Fixed)

• Bug 1146420: Performance issues with Espeak. (Fixed)

• Made the Chrome OS camera snackbar more accessible by making it a live region. (Change 2599566)

• Added focus ring for search results in the launcher. (Change 2547393, Bug 1109293)

• Fixed bug where settings opened every time Switch Access was enabled. (Change 2618580, Bug 1162750)

• Dashed focus ring in Switch Access now has a different style. (Change 2622757, Bug 1152610)

• Miscellaneous and improvements to Account Manager flows and Account Manager settings page. (Bug 1144114, Bug 1144113, Bug 1148246)

• Improved accessibility on the send confirmation page, discovery page. (Change 2569897, Bug 1148475)

• Do not announce potentially misleading hotkey for fullscreen on Chrome OS. (Change 2548383, Bug 1110468)

• Switch Access can now navigate within the content of a Google Doc. (Change 2569062, Bug 1115978)

• Fixed a ChromeOS bug where user info dialog on lock screen was not announced by ChromeVox. (Change 2544969, Bug 901427)

• (ARC++) Added support for announcing Android app's auto completion of editables. (Change 2576068)

• Fixed a bug where screen reader focus would get trapped within context menus. (Change 2560616, Change 2561540, Bug 1131321)

• Fixed a bug where lock screen dropdown messages would not be updated to reflect changes causing ChromeVox to announce stale content. (Change 2540593, Bug 901427)

• Fixed a bug where the virtual keyboard would sometimes not be shown when Switch Access was enabled. (Change 2590370, Bug 1151515)

Chrome on Android

• Fixed touch target issues in the web payments UI. (Bug 977272)

• Properly labeled the incognito logo of the incognito custom tab toolbar. (Change 2560739, Bug 1104180)

• Added button role to interstitial debugging information toggle. (Change 2582469, Bug 1061611)

• Improved performance on some Android pages when lots of content is changing. (Change 2552897)

• Added support for new experimental feature to automatically generate alt descriptions for images. (Change 2327176, Change 2552569, Bug 1057168, Bug 1057169)

• Android now proactively announces that comboboxes have been expanded and, where possible, communicates the number of autocomplete options available. (Change 2508646, Bug 1121764)

• Added more precise utterances for aria-haspopup values. (Change 2561638, Bug 1090145, Bug 1117588)

• Talkback may not explicitly announce that elements are long clickable. (Change 2583142)

Chrome on iOS

• Added accessibility notification of window count changes. (Change 2540670, Bug 1137818)

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Kara Booker |

Google |

Chrome & Chrome OS Accessibility Program Manager