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Accessibility Developer Guide
http://www.accessibility-developer-guide.com
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Autosuggest: Guide doesn't explain where the recommendation comes from, no mention of HTML <datalist> #349

Open renestalder opened 3 years ago

renestalder commented 3 years ago

Reference: https://www.accessibility-developer-guide.com/examples/widgets/autosuggest/

In other guides, I found this: https://thepaciellogroup.github.io/AT-browser-tests/test-files/datalist.html

And this: https://a11ysupport.io/tests/tech__html__datalist

But then, I didn't find a convenient counter example why not to use it.

Looking at our guide, there is a recommendation what this kind of component should do:

the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices do not offer a section about autosuggests. [...] Besides many other requirements, we want to stress out explicitly the following: [...] Proper feedback must be given upon entering a filter ("2 suggestions available for X" or similar).

However, the guide does not state where this recommendation is coming from. Is it a combination of multiple WCAG recommendations? Is it coming from experience and tests made at Access For All? Is it coming though other forms of research?

I believe the guide should include a mention of the datalist element with a recommendation of whether to use it or not and a "why" for the recommendation made in the current guide.

jmuheim commented 1 year ago

As far as I remember, the datalist Element wasn't a big thing yet back then, or it wasn't fully screen reader compatible. At least it wasn't announcing how many elements there are; meanwhile, after reading a blogpost about the comboboxes in the APG (https://tollwerk.de/projekte/tipps-techniken-inklusiv-barrierefrei/die-aria-combobox#optionale-statusmeldung), I'm unsure whether this notification has ever been mandatory anyway (although I find it pretty crucial).

Anyway, our current Autocomplete shows its age, and during a presentation a few months ago, I realised that it doesn't feel as smooth anymore as it used to (NVDA). Last year we created a Multi-Select version using checkboxes, and it feels much better: https://josh.ch/dropdown/multi.html. Why not simply replace the current one with this one?