How is ListBox usable for screen readers?

[Mike]

I'm evaluating whether I can use a listbox in my web app, which needs to meet 508 accessibility standards for screen reader users.  While the demo site says that the control is 508 compliant from an evaluation standpoint, i'm curious as to how I can get it to actually be usable to blind users.  I tried running jaws against the keyboard support demo, and while I can use the arrows to navigate the list and select an item with the spacebar, the keystrokes to move the selected option into the right box do not work. Essentially none of the keyboard keys listed in the legend work because Jaws is trapping the key events before it gets to the control.  

That being said, I then tried wrapping the demo in a div with a role="application" attribute, and jaws now allows the keyboard events to pass through to the control. However, it now doesn't actually read the items in the list as you are scrolling through them.

So my question is, how can this control be set up to be usable for screen reader users?  Meaning it will read the options to the user, and also allow them to navigate within the control with the keyboard.

Thanks,

Mike

[Plamen]

Hello Mike,

Unfortunately RadListBox does no have the aria support in the current version. Please excuse us for this limitation of the control. You can log it as a feature request in our feedback portal here.  

Regards,
Plamen
Telerik

[yi]

any update this year is possible please?

[Rumen]

Hello Yi,

RadListBox is still not part of the components, which offer WAI-ARIA support. The list is available at WAI-ARIA Support and Screen Readers.

I searched in the feedback portal and was unable to locate a feature request for its implementation. That's why for your convenience, I logged a feature request here, which will allow us to see what would be the demand for its implementation.

Please grant your vote for it. Thank you!

Regarding your scenario, you may find useful replacing RadListBox with its ListBox counterpart from the Kendo UI for jQuery suite. The ListBox widget offers built-in WAI-ARIA support.


Best regards,
Rumen
Progress Telerik

[yi]

thanks, hope we will hear some good news.

[yi]

Hey, I am realizing items in listbox demo can be read by JAWS, but I didn't see any different between code from demo and mine. that is confusing.

[Rumen]

It could be that the demo runs the latest version of the product, which is R2 2018 (2018.2.516).

Regards,
Rumen
Progress Telerik