JAWS Screenreader, Table Loses Focus When Sorting From Column Header (508 Compliance)

JAWS Screenreader, Table Loses Focus When Sorting From Column Header (508 Compliance)

Bill MayBill May Posts: 3Questions: 1Answers: 0

The government application I work on is going through an audit and we got dinged on an issue with the table losing focus when sorting.

Here is the scenario with JAWS v17 running:
1) Using the TAB key, user navigates to table in the page, uses TAB key to navigate to desired column header
2) Presses ENTER key to sort the table, successfully sorts.
3) On the same column header, presses ENTER key again to re-sort. The table loses focus.
4) JAWS announces "Showing 1 to 5 of 18 entries" (This can obviously change based on the data.
5) Press TAB key, next field visited it the pagination buttons for the table.

Has anyone experienced this before?

To make matters more interesting, this issue does not occur when JAWS is NOT running.

Answers

  • allanallan Posts: 61,446Questions: 1Answers: 10,054 Site admin

    Are you able to try it with JAWS 18? I hate to say it, but it sounds like a JAWS issue since it doesn't happen when JAWS is not running. DataTables will not blur the focused element when the enter key is pressed as you have seen. It will blur it if the column sorting is activated by a click, to stop the focus ring from appearing.

    Regards,
    Allan

  • Bill MayBill May Posts: 3Questions: 1Answers: 0

    Unfortunately the audit is being done with JAWS 17.

    I put this bit of code in place to see if any functionality was being changed at the time of the second keypress:
    $('#currentQIRS thead').on('keyup', 'th', function(e) {
    if (e.keyCode == 13)
    {
    console.log("ENTER PRESSED"); }
    else
    {
    console.log("What now? " + e.keyCode);
    }
    });

    The first time I sorted on a field, I saw ENTER PRESSED and could see that the column header still appeared to have focus after the sorting was done.

    I pressed ENTER again and there was no console output at all.

    If this gives you any ideas, great! Otherwise I'll be pinging JAWS support.

    Thanks!

  • allanallan Posts: 61,446Questions: 1Answers: 10,054 Site admin

    It appears to work as expected without JAWS: http://live.datatables.net/cusufulo/1/edit .

    Allan

  • Bill MayBill May Posts: 3Questions: 1Answers: 0

    It does work as expected with out JAWS.

  • allanallan Posts: 61,446Questions: 1Answers: 10,054 Site admin

    Happy to be copied in on any communication you have with Freedom Scientific if it might be useful? allan @ thisDomain.net.

    Allan

  • tturnertturner Posts: 1Questions: 0Answers: 0

    Was there a resolution to this? We got dinged on an accessibility audit for the ** exact same issue**, but it's only with Internet Explorer (v11) with Jaws "2019". All works fine in Chrome and Edge browsers using Jaws.

  • allanallan Posts: 61,446Questions: 1Answers: 10,054 Site admin

    I'm don't really getting any feedback on this with regarding to what Freedom Scientific might have said. It would be worth contacting their support if it works in other browsers and the focus works as expected in IE11 without JAWS. It sounds like a JAWS / IE11 issue.

    Allan

This discussion has been closed.