Chrome/Chrome OS Accessibility Version 79 Release Notes

[Laura (Palmaro) Allen]

Hi everyone,

Hope your year is off to a good start! Chrome version 79 was released in December before the holidays and 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 when available for reference. 

Chrome on Desktop Platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux)

• Improved labelling of search results in the chrome://flags page. (Bug) 

• Enabled the Extensions Menu to be more accessible through keyboard. (Bug)

• Increased prominence and visibility of the active Chrome tab when in dark mode. (Bug)

• Improved labelling and descriptions on the chrome://accessibility page to clarify what the controls on the page do. (Bug)

• The chrome://accessibility page now supports filters to allow developers to focus on only specific attributes when debugging the accessibility tree for web pages. (Bug)

• Added better keyboard accessibility support to the chrome://flags extensions menu. (Bug)

• Tabs can now be rearranged using keyboard only when focus is in the tabstrip. You can do this through pressing Shift + Right or Left. (Bug)

• Improved contrast and thickness of borders in tab sharing for better visibility. (Bug)

• Improved labelling and added support for PIN validation errors on the security key settings UI.

• Fixed a regression that had occurred when focusing on a saved/downloaded file in the download bar using the keyboard. (Bug)

• DevTools (Bug)

• Added more headings in the interface and removed an unnecessary extra tab in the Settings Throttling Pane.

• Added screen reader and keyboard accessibility support to the copy color function in the color picker interface. 

• Added accessibility fixes for the remote debugging landing page. 

• Console message source links are now more keyboard accessible. 

• Added better labeling and keyboard accessibility support in the Bottom-Up and Call Tree view of the Perf Pane. 

• Fixed a regression that had occurred with keyboard accessibility for the 'Add pattern' link in the Request blocking section. (Bug)

• Improved keyboard accessibility and focus management for sources pane and the infobar.

• Improved keyboard and screen reader accessibility of the search bar.

Chrome on Mac

• Fixed a bug in VoiceOver in the chrome://accessibility page that would cause focus to jump when refreshing the accessibility tree. (Bug)

• Now keeps VoiceOver and system focus in sync when navigating through the browser frame. (Bug)

Chrome on Windows

• Improved NVDA announcements when searching chrome://flags/, where it would previously not announce any search results. (Bug)

Chrome OS

• ChromeVox screen reader

• ChromeVox now respects user-specific key mappings set via Settings.

• Fixed a bug where ChromeVox would announce the title of the sign in screen incorrectly. (Bug)

• Fixed an issue with braille hardware input. (Bug)

• ChromeVox now better reports grammar errors by announcing the start and end of the error in both speech and braille. (Bug)

• Made focus recovery when closing a window more consistent. (Bug)

• Fix label for volume slider.

• Added the battery and rich text hotkeys/commands into the ChromeVox menu (accessible through pressing Search + Period).  

• Improved phonetic speech, including addition of a hotkey to announce phonetic disambiguation and fixed an issue where phonetic hints would be interrupted by other speech output. In addition, phonetic character disambiguation is now supported in Japanese. 

• Improved labelling on the Files App feedback panel. (Bug)

Chrome on Android

• Fixed some incorrect accessibility text when the DSE icon is enabled. (Bug)

• Fixed Talkback announcements for date and time input. Previously, it would not read date for elements with an aria-label tag (Bug), and also read previous date value for plain date inputs (Bug)

• Added missing Talkback announcements for the title of password manager modal dialogs. (Bug)

• Talkback now announces the disabled button state correctly. (Bug)

Chrome on iOS

• In the Reader list, VoiceOver now announces the count of unread reading list articles more specifically. (Bug)

• Fixed a bug in History which would continue to read history items despite focus being on the search box. (Bug)

• Improved button labelling in the Manage Sync settings page. (Bug)

Thanks so much. 

Laura, on behalf of the team

Laura (Palmaro) Allen |

Google |

Sr. Chrome & Chrome OS Accessibility Program Manager | Pronouns: she/her | Anonymous Feedback