ChromeVox does not read content with opacity: 0

[joshangehr]

This is:

• Feature request

Expected Behavior

This is not an error with AOS, but a request based on a specific feature of ChromeVox. Screen readers such as NVDA, Jaws and VoiceOver announce elements that have opacity: 0, but ChromeVox does not. The assistive technology (AT) should navigate appropriately to these elements because they will eventually appear in the viewport, and this is the expected experience for a user.

Actual Behavior

Because of this ChromeVox feature, AOS elements are skipped over when using a keyboard, providing a confusing and incorrect experience. Because the elements are not yet in the viewport, they still have an opacity of 0, and thus they are perceived as invisible and skipped by the AT. This is the only screen reader I know of that performs this way, but it's a simple fix.

Steps to Reproduce the Problem

1. Activate ChromeVox in Chrome and begin navigating the page. Using Ctrl+Cmd+Down Arrow, you can navigate through page elements.
2. If an AOS initialization is set on the element and it is not in the viewport, ChromeVox will skip to the next element that does not have an opacity of 0.
3. If using AOS heavily across a page, the AT may skip the entire content.

Detailed Description

1. It's a bit of a hack, but changing the opacity values in animations.scss to 0.001 resolves the issue. ChromeVox will then navigate to them appropriately when using a keyboard.

Possible Solution

Provided above.

[lsterling03]

Seconded!