Re: [orca-list] Should Orca treat navigational bars as lists or not

[Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs igalia com>]

On 2/19/20 11:02, Alex ARNAUD via orca-list wrote:

[...]

> like NVDA. On NVDA pressing down arrow switches to the list first item 
> then all item of the list, I think it's a good idea too.

I *think* that assumes a virtual buffer or something similar. When you 
move to a list, Orca automatically puts you on the first item because it 
sets the caret in the first position at the new location. The first 
position in a list is the first list item.

> > 2. Prevent "l" (and "i") from treating those navbars as lists?
> I don't think it's the philosophy of Orca to change the website behaviour.

It depends on whether or not the website behavior is sound for the 
purpose of navigation and presentation -- along with how much work it 
would take for Orca to deal with sorting things out.

For instance, if an author uses a layout table, and Orca is told it's a 
layout table by Firefox, Orca tries to treat it as if it were not a 
table. (In the case of Chrome and WebKit, Orca doesn't even know a 
layout table is a table because Chrome and WebKit strip the table 
semantics from layout tables.)

We also see authors providing lists with zero items in them, but text 
inside that list. (e.g. something like <ul>hello world</ul>). Orca 
doesn't treat that as a list because it's just not functionally a list.

So the question is: Are navbar lists really a list that should be 
navigated as a list or not?

If the answer is yes, then I think Orca should probably announce the 
list and the item count. But I can imagine hearing the navbar list item 
count being annoying to some users -- users who *do* want to hear the 
list and item count when arrowing into a "normal" list (i.e. one with 
bullets and numbers).  Related aside: It turns out that there are two 
lists in the navbar example Nolan provided. That might be a lot of 
chattiness for that navbar.... And thinking about this reaction, and the 
different nature of a navbar list from other lists in web content makes 
me question whether this should be treated as a list at all....

Anyway, let's see what other feedback we get.

Thanks!
--joanie