Chrome Version 72 Accessibility Release Notes

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Laura (Palmaro) Allen

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Feb 6, 2019, 12:04:03 AM2/6/19
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Hi all,


Hope you're doing well! Chrome version 72 comes with a number of accessibility fixes and improvements across platforms. Here are some of the notable updates in this milestone.


  • Windows, Mac, Linux

    • In Chrome 72 you can now focus tabs in the tab strip. On Windows and Linux, press F6 to cycle focus between panes until it reaches the tab strip. Then use arrows, space, and the context menu key.

    • Chrome 72 better handles Windows screen readers after you close the laptop lid and re-open.

    • Chrome 72 now identifies default buttons in dialogs to assistive technology.

    • Screen readers now announce the zoom level when you change it using keyboard shortcuts in Chrome 72.

    • Chrome 72 on macOS has better support for full keyboard access of the toolbar, including pressing the down arrow to open extension pop-up menus.

    • In Chrome 72, the security chip next to the URL has a better accessible description.

    • On Windows, you can now use Home and End in Chrome 72 menus.

    • In Chrome 72, disabled buttons, text fields and menus have a slightly higher contrast ratio now.

  • Chrome OS

    • In Chrome 72 you can now focus tabs in the tab strip. Press Ctrl+Back (Ctrl+F1) and Ctrl+Forward (Ctrl+F2) to cycle focus between panes until it reaches the tab strip. Then use arrows and space to navigate, and Search+Shift+VolumeUp to access the context menu.

    • Chrome 72 fixes an issue where the set of text-to-speech voices displayed was not always accurate until after the first time speech was generated.

    • In Chrome 72, when you open a video or audio file directly from the File Manager, the media controls are now more accessible.

    • In Chrome 72, the status tray network and input method indicator icons now have proper accessibility labels.

    • ChromeVox

      • Chrome 72 fixes an issue where the virtual keyboard wouldn't always pop up when focusing a text field using ChromeVox.

      • In Chrome 72, ChromeVox correctly announces Incognito windows when pressing Search+A then W to read the current window title.

      • The ChromeVox tutorial now has a page on using touch screens.

      • The ChromeVox tutorial site, https://www.chromevox.com, is now served over https.

      • In Chrome 72, ChromeVox now announces when a fingerprint was successfully or unsuccessfully recognized.

  • Web Platform

    • In Chrome 72, scrollable areas are now keyboard-focusable. For example, if a web page has release notes inside a scrollable area, you can press Tab to focus the scrollable area and then use keys like Down or PageDown to scroll.

    • Chrome 72 fixes issues that could occur when a CSS display property changed.

    • Chrome 72 now ignores aria-hidden on focused elements. That means that screen readers will now announce the current focused control even if a poorly-authored web page has marked that node as hidden.

    • In Chrome 72, audio and video controls have better accessibility labels and the volume slider is now a percentage.

    • Chrome 72 fixes an issue where certain obscure HTML could cause portions of a web page to be inaccessible.

    • Chrome 72 fixes an issue where dynamically created tables could have bad row/column indexes, which could cause cells to be skipped when using a screen reader's table navigation commands.

  • Chrome on Android

    • In Chrome 72 the tab switcher is now labeled with "tap to switch tabs" in addition to the number of open tabs, to make it clear what happens if you activate it.

    • TalkBack no longer reports the level for lists that aren't nested, it was redundant.

    • TalkBack now correctly speaks the new value of a slider when you change its value.

    • In Chrome 72, Temporary messages that appear on the screen don't disappear as quickly when an accessibility service is running.

    • Chrome 72 fixes an issue where the screen indicating that Chrome can't update wasn't accessible.

  • Developer Tools

    • Chrome Developer Tools now links to the aria-hidden ancestor when it reports that a node is hidden for that reason.

    • The chrome://accessibility page has some minor UI improvements and a new feature to copy the text dump of an accessibility tree to the clipboard.



 Laura (Palmaro) Allen | Google | Chrome & Chrome OS Accessibility Program Manager | Pronouns: she/her

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