CBG/RBG helper and tooltip are not announced by Chrome/NVDA

[rolfsmeds]

What is the problem?

The helper text and tooltip of a CheckboxGroup and RadioButtonGroup are not announced by Chrome/NVDA.

Both are associated with the group via aria-describedby on the root element.

Chrome's a11y inspector shows that:

• it picks up the helper correctly, but NVDA doesn't announce it.
• it does not pick up the tooltip (the tooltip's ID is not listed in the Described by property in the panel

(The label, associated via aria-labelledby seems to work fine though.)

Browsers

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Safari on iOS
• Edge

Screen Readers

• None
• NVDA
• JAWS
• VoiceOver on MacOS
• VoiceOver on iOS

[web-padawan]

Tested this and it seems like we can fix the issue by linking tooltip with every individual checkbox when it is registered. While it makes the announcement a bit verbose (repeating the same tooltip announcement for each Tab key press), users can still use Esc to dismiss the tooltip. This isn't true for the helper text though, as it's always visible.

[web-padawan]

Speaking about helper announcement, it looks like the result of #5818 to me. Now when we link tooltip to separate <input> elements in #6456 and #6472 rather than a group, it might make sense to revert that change and use aria-labelledby.

[web-padawan]

Tested this once again, and the only combination where helper isn't announced is vaadin-checkbox-group in NVDA.

NVDA + Chrome

• vaadin-radio-group: helper is announced with the label,
• vaadin-checkbox-group: helper is not announced at all.

JAWS + Chrome

• vaadin-radio-group: helper is announced with the label,
• vaadin-checkbox-group: helper is announced with the label

[web-padawan]

Confirmed that reverting #5818 (badec72) makes NVDA and VoiceOver announce vaadin-checkbox-group helper text:

[rolfsmeds]

So it's a decision between keeping things simple and per-spec (in that aria-describedby is technically more correct than aria-labelledby for this) versus ensuring it works in NVDA (and VO?)

[web-padawan]

Yes. Note, reverting the change mentioned above would make 24.2 behave differently compared to 24.1.
I don't have a strong opinion but using aria-describedby for the helper text seems more logical to me.

[knoobie]

Vote for aria-describedby as well. (it feels semantically more correct)

[rolfsmeds]

The spec for aria-describedby doesn't seem to limit the roles with which it's supposed to be used in any way. In fact, it clearly states

Used in Roles: All elements of the base markup

So I do think we can safely consider NVDA limiting announcements of it to a small subset of roles to be incorrect or at least incomplete.

If we decide to stick with aria-describedby, which I'd personally lean towards doing, we could just note in the docs that NVDA (and I suppose VO too) doesn't support it on Checkbox Group.