Re: [orca-list] Should Orca present live regions on non-active tabs? (was Re: Orca reads contents of non-active tab)

[Mallory <stommepoes stommepoes nl>]

I agree with Nolan. From a developer viewpoint I would not expect non-focussed tabs to read out live regions 
to users. Users could easily be in a situation where many many tabs are open and there's no way to determine 
which one is announcing stuff.

I have fewer expectations on whether a tab with a change in a live region would/should announce anything when 
that tab regains focus, however (I believe Jamie mentioned something about queues, or the lack of them, in 
NVDA for example). That sounds like something developers would test themselves, or ask AT-using users to test 
for them. I don't believe the specs say anything either way. Developers have a hasFocus() DOM API call they 
can use to check whether the user is focussed on their page, and some browsers pause any scripts running on 
non-focussed tabs (Chrome/chromium stops the DuckDuckGo stopwatch for example). This means in theory 
developers should expect they need to more manually manage live region changes and ensure they only happen 
when their page has focus anyway.

cheers,
_mallory

On Tue, Oct 1, 2019, at 4:12 PM, Nolan Darilek wrote:
> I'd been thinking about this a bit as well, and hadn't brought it up 
> because of potential controversy.
>
>
> My thought is that Orca shouldn't present live regions from 
> inactive/unfocused tabs or windows. Imagine the tab was any other app on 
> the system. I wouldn't get terminal output read if I was in Thunderbird, 
> so I don't think that an open chat tab, or even an open web terminal, 
> should speak either.
>
>
> For cases where a tab needs to alert in the background, we have web 
> notifications, and those tend to work well.
>
>
> I don't think it should be a preference, because if it were then it'd 
> have no similar analog outside of web content (I.e. there's no 
> preference to speak terminal output from unfocused windows.) But I don't 
> feel strongly enough about it to advocate for the point. I just don't 
> want to see unnecessary preference creep if it can be avoided.
>
>
> On 10/1/19 9:01 AM, Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> > Hi Alex.
> >
> > I believe this is happening due to live regions. It's not clear to me 
> > if Orca should always ignore live regions from non-active tabs or if 
> > that should potentially be a preference. And if it's a preference, 
> > what should the default be?
> >
> > Thus I've changed the subject to see if we (Orca community) can reach 
> > consensus on the desired behavior.
> >
> > --joanie
> >
> > On 10/1/19 8:08 AM, Alex ARNAUD via orca-list wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Environment:
> > > - Debian 9 "Stretch"
> > > - Firefox Nightly
> > > - Orca master
> > >
> > > 1) Open this page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG6je87aQJQ
> > > Let Youtube move to the next video automatically
> > > 2) Open a new tab with control + t and stay on the second tab
> > > 3) Wait until Youtube switches to the next video
> > >
> > > Result:
> > > Orca announce content from the Youtube tab whereas you're on another tab
> > >
> > > Expected result:
> > > I assume we shouldn't hear data from another tab.
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > > Alex.
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> > > https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html
> >
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