[orca-list] Orca began having trouble to read the contents of number spin buttons in recent releases of Brave and Chromium (forwarded message)

[Didier Spaier <didier slint fr>]

Hi,

this issue reported by Aiyumi Moriya (not subscribed to this list) is
forwarded below:

2. I'm using the Brave web browser, which is based on Chromium. I've
been using it for a few months now, and am quite happy with it (I even
think it responds better than Firefox most of the time). However,
after I upgraded the browser, Orca began having trouble to read the
contents of number spin buttons (those 'input type="number"' form
input boxes where we can increase or decrease the value with the up
and down arrow keys). Sometimes Orca reads the numbers, sometimes not.
A few things I noticed are:

* When the input field has a "label" HTML element for it, Orca only
reads the label, and not the value like it should. When we press
either the up or down arrow keys to change the value, Orca keeps
repeating the label instead of speaking the value. Flat review also
fails to detect the field's content. When we move the caret inside the
field with the left and right arrow keys, Orca only says "blank"
instead of speaking the characters that are there. I don't know if
other HTML elements besides the label also trigger this Orca behavior,
but the label certainly does.
* When the input field doesn't have a "label" HTML element for it,
Orca reads the numbers inside when the field gets focus. When we press
either the up or down arrow keys to change the value, Orca announces
the new value properly. Flat review also works as it should. However,
like in the previous case, when we move the caret inside the field
with the left and right arrow keys, Orca only says "blank" instead of
speaking the characters inside the field.
* These strange problems don't happen in Firefox.

I'm not sure if these problems with spin buttons come from Chromium or
are specific to the Brave browser, but I first noticed them when I
upgraded Brave to version 1.28.103. Now I'm on 1.29.79 (which uses
Chromium 93.0.4577.63 according to Brave's changelog) and these
problems are still happening. If I downgrade Brave to 1.26.77 (which
used Chromium 91.0.4472.164), Orca's problems with spin buttons go
away, but being stuck with an outdated browser isn't a good idea...

Hopefully these problems can be solved from the Orca side.

(then in a second message - Didier):

2. I ended up installing the Chromium package by Eric Hameleers. And
yes, the numeric spin input box problem happens there too. So, now we
know that the problem is in Chromium.

(version of the package from Eric was 93.0.4577.63-1 - Didier)