Investigate how assistive technologies interact with character count #2539
Description
What
We're looking to investigate how screen reader assistive technologies interact with the character count component.
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/character-count/
https://govuk-frontend-review.herokuapp.com/components/character-count
The investigation will focus primarily on gathering information to help resolve four related bugs, listed below.
Related bug tickets
This investigation will help us understand the bugs listed in the four tickets below.
- Character count message is repeated twice by screen readers #2485
- Hint text for a character count is included by screen readers as part of the count message #2486
- Multiple outdated announcements can be made when the user stops typing into the character count. #2487
- Character count messages are announced by screen readers even when the count is below a set threshold #2488
Why
The character count component was initially designed to play well with screen readers, but sometime after the launch of the component something changed. Now there are four bugs that make interacting with the character count component via
a screen reader frustrating and cumbersome.
This might be an accessibility compliance issue, but more investigation would be needed to confirm. For now, we're approaching it as a severe usability issue and poor experience for those using a screen reader (and potentially other assistive technologies as well).
Who needs to work on this
- @davidc-gds will handle the accessibility portions of the investigation and test with various browser and assistive technology combinations.
- @owenatgov has offered to support from a developer perspective if capacity allows, since the character count component includes some JavaScript.
Who needs to review this
Unknown
Done when
- Character count component variants are tested on various screen readers and browsers
- Research is compiled into a summary
- All 4 identified bugs have been explored
- Action items and approaches are identified and proposed for each of the four identified bugs