Expand/Collapse Controls in Code Editor Do Not Indicate Live Regions

[Bluefish0558]

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes/No

• VS Code Version: 1.92.2
• OS Version: 14.6.1 (23G93)

Steps to Reproduce: The controls to expand or collapse lines in the VSCode code editor dynamically change content without indicating live regions, making screen reader users unaware of important updates.

1. Open the code editor in VSCode.
2. Use a screen reader to navigate and expand/collapse lines in the code editor.
3. Observe that there are no live region announcements for these actions.

Expected Behavior: Screen readers should announce "Code folded" when controls are collapsed and "Code unfolded" when expanded. This can be achieved by implementing ARIA live regions, using attributes like role="log", aria-live, aria-atomic, and aria-relevant.

Actual Behavior: No live region updates are provided, leaving screen reader users unaware of the changes.

Recommendation: Implement ARIA live regions or appropriate role attributes to ensure status messages are programmatically detectable without receiving focus.

[meganrogge]

@rperez030 and @jooyoungseo, do you have thoughts on this?

[rperez030]

I have personally not felt the need for something like that, but I can see how it could be helpful to some users. given that it is just a confirmation of action, the message should probably be 'folded' or 'unfoldede'. Ideally this could turn into another configurable signal with audio / announcement options.

[vs-code-engineering[bot]]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[rperez030]

This should not be considered a feature request. Technically this fails WCAG 2.2 SC 4.1.3 Status messages. @meganrogge