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Browsing down the page using the arrow keys is non-intuitive when an ARIA Tree control is present #3023

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@nvaccessAuto

Reported by bgaraventa on 2013-02-22 19:54
Properly marked up ARIA Tree controls do work properly in NVDA in both IE 8 and 9 and in FF when you tab to the field, which then enters Applications Mode. You can then use the arrow keys to navigate the tree structure to expand and collapse branches and brows leaf nodes.

However, if you are navigating the page using the arrow keys, such as starting at the top, then moving to the bottom using only the Down arrow key, the nature of the ARIA Tree is not conveyed, and all of the tree nodes are visible, which is confusing because it doesn't look like an actionable form control.

It would make more sense if the field, when arrowing, was conveyed as one item, like a Select form field, where the explicit label of the field via aria-label was announced, and the first selected node in the tree was also announced, followed by the keyword "Tree" or "TreeView".

This would make it obvious to those arrowing down the page, that the ARIA Tree was one form field, with one tab stop, and that it is necessary to enter Applications Mode in order to interact with the control more fully.

I've attached a sample of this, which is part of a traning course I'm building for Cal State. The practical is contained within the folder: Coding Arena\ARIA Trees\Tree (External XML)

The same behavior can be observed in both IE and FF.

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