JAWS 2018 treats main and role main differently

[ghost]

Summary

At least with IE 11, when using <main>, JAWS 2018 announced the main region when you first navigate into it. But if then does not repeat this information. This seems to generally work well.

However, again with IE11, if you have form fields within a container with role="main", the behavour is differant. Every time you tab onto a field, JAWS announced "region".

Expected result

I would expect that the behavour of main and role="main" to be the same. In this case, I would expect role="main" to behave like main and not echo "region".

Example

This can be seen with ...

<div role="main">
<input type="text" aria-label="first Name" value="first name">
</div>
<main>
<input type="text" aria-label="first Name" value="first name">
</main>

[JAWS-test]

The problem also exists with JAWS 2019.

The output of "Region" is also done for other ARIA landmark regions such as

• search
• contentinfo
• complementary
• article
• banner

but not for

• region
• navigation

The output of "Region" only occurs for elements that cause a change to form mode.

The problem has existed for a long time (at least since JAWS 15)

The problem does not occur in Chrome.

The main problems seem to be:

• In IE 11 you don't hear the region's roles and labels when you enter it.
• In IE 11 you hear "Region" within the region for every form field that causes form mode.

Correct would be (as in Chrome):

• Output of the specific region and labeling only when entering
• No difference in output depending on mode
• No output of "Region" at each navigation step with the tab key

It might make sense:

• Output of the region end also with tab navigation (currently only when reading with the arrow keys)

[kurtjwolf]

A similar issue has been filed internally as bug #108116.

[stevefaulkner]

A similar issue has been filed internally as bug #108116.

@BrettLewisVispero is this still an internal issue?