aria-autocomplete inline suggestion text problematic

[mbgower]

The guide states

When an inline suggestion is made as a user types in an input, suggested text for completing the value of the field dynamically appears in the field after the input cursor, and the suggested value is accepted as the value of the input if the user performs an action that causes focus to leave the field.

This directive is open to interpretation and potentially problematic. First, when the paragraph states "appears in the field after the input cursor", it is not clear whether it is stating that when such text is appended 1) the cursor repositions to the end of the appended text, or 2) the input cursor remains in position and the appended text exists beyond the current insertion point. If the latter, the paragraph seems to direct that if I type a search for "yellow" and the inline suggestion becomes "yellowstone", the results for "yellowstone" would be posted if I pressed ENTER or TAB. That seems to be causing a change of context based On Input. The sighted user can neither predict nor assume this behaviour. The screen reader user or user with significant magnification may not even be aware this text has been appended.
I have seen examples of both of these interpretations, as well as implementations that provide what I would argue is a more reasonable implementation. For the latter, Google appends text beyond the insertion point, and even updates the results in the background based on the appended text, but if the user presses ENTER, the results are based on the original string ("yellow").
I would request both clarity about inline suggestions, as well as urge this guidance be revised to advocate a more predictable result.

[mcking65]

@mbgower,

It looks like you are quoting the
ARIA 1.1 spec
rather than the
authoring practices guide.
We haven't yet added the autocomplete and combobox sections to the guide.

We can certainly clear this up in the guide. But, if you are proposing a spec change, that would need to be logged as an
ARIA spec issue.
If you raise an issue, I would be quite happy to work on it and improve that language as I am the one who rewrote that section of the spec for ARIA 1.1.

The language you quoted does not say anything about moving the input cursor after the selected text. The spec does say that the suggested text should have a selected state and be after the cursor.

But it sounds like the main question here is what actions and keys should cause the selected suggestion to become part of the field value. Note that the spec does not specify what specific keys should do.
We work hard to avoid putting those types of UX/implementation details in the spec and save them for the authoring practices guide, which is not normative.

I agree that the google behavior on enter is good. I don't know that it is the only good behavior. So, there may be a few options covered by the guide.

[mbgower]

Thanks, @mcking65 . You are correct that I got confused about where the quoted guidanced appears. I have opened up a near-verbatim issue in the spec github, so this APG issue can be closed.