[Other - Accessibility] Unnecessary/overly verbose screen reader text. (00.00.1)

[shiragoodman]

General Information

VFS team name

VA Online Scheduling (VAOS)

VFS product name

VA Online Scheduling

VFS feature name

Appointment List

Point of Contact/Reviewers

Brian DeConinck - @briandeconinck - Accessibility

*For more information on how to interpret this ticket, please refer to the Anatomy of a Staging Review issue ticket guidance on Platform Website.

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Platform Issue

No VA.gov Experience Standard for the issue found.

Issue Details

There are a few instances of screen-reader-only text that can end up being distracting for screen reader users rather than providing necessary clarification or context.

• The first cell for each appointment is announced as "appointment on [date/time]." The "appointment on" text isn't necessary given the context of the page, and the repetition ends up being cumbersome and distracting. Just an aria-label with the date/time string as formatted for screen reader announcing is sufficient.
• The H2 month/year headings are announced as "Appointments in [month/year]." From the context of the page, just the month/year are sufficient, no need to add the extra <span class="sr-only">Appointments in</span>.
• The modality of each appointment has the word "appointment" at the end of the aria-label, eg. "Video appointment" or "At Cheyenne VA Medical Center appointment." The "appointment" reminder doesn't really add much value.
• Each list of appointments for a given month is associated with the H2 that precedes it using aria-labelledby. The relationship between the list and the H2 is clear enough just from the DOM order and the month/year information is included for each appointment via another aria-label, so the aria-labelledby leads to some redundant screen reader behavior.

Link, screenshot or steps to recreate

VA.gov Experience Standard

Category Number 00, Issue Number 00

Other References

Platform Recommendation

I appreciate the intention here! It's just a little overzealous, and the repetition of the word "appointment" doesn't really benefit screen reader users. Definitely add screen-reader-only text (either the sr-only class or an aria-label) to give an interactive element a unique accessible name or to provide missing context that's communicated to sighted users by visual cues. But in these cases I don't think the extra clarification is needed.

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VFS Guidance

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[ldelacosta]

@shiragoodman - We will review this as we begin the work on Phase 2A for Appointments MHV on VA.gov work. cc: @JRRoof @outerpress

[shiragoodman]

thanks @ldelacosta . Per our guidance above, we request that this ticket remain open until the issue is resolved. Thanks for your understanding.