optionLabel breaks keyboard navigation for screen readers

[Rich]

Defining a non-empty optionLabel breaks keyboard navigation when ARIA or JAWS is used.

See the example at http://dojo.telerik.com/@richm/OLumO.  Using Chrome and ARIA, I focus the dropdown and press Alt-DownArrow to open the list.  Pressing down arrow again should begin to navigate within the list, but instead ARIA announces "blank" and further down arrow keypresses seems to move navigator seems to move around the HTML document and the dropdown closes.  JAWS behaves similarly.

This does not occur if ARIA or JAWS is not running.

Any help appreciated - thanks.

 

[Veselin Tsvetanov]

Hi Rich,

I have tested JAWS 17 reader with Chrome and with IE 11. While testing in Chrome, I was able to reproduce the error, which was not present in IE 11. Generally, Chrome is known for causing issues like the observed, while using JAWS as screen reader. The reason for that is, that each screen reader is developed to work best in one of the browsers, therefore issues, while using it with others may arise.

Because of the above inconsistency of browsers and readers, the Kendo UI suite is tested to follow the Section 508 and the WAI AREA specification. A reliable tool for performing the abode validation is the WAVE validator. 

I hope, that the above explains a bit, why issues as the discussed could be observed while using different screen readers in different browsers.

Regards,
Veselin Tsvetanov
Telerik by Progress