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Feature Request FR-4845
Product Area User Interface
Status CLOSED

2 Voters

Accessibility – Not enough information on focus of sort buttons to blind people

tim.bartelt Public · Mar 26 2026

The buttons of the filter popup (blue square on screenshot) doesn’t transfer the information to blind people, which data (column) will be sorted ascending or descending.

The issue can be reproduced with the reference app of the universal theme 24.2 and it is needed that a screenreader is running. On our side it is JAWS 2023 but I think it can be any screenreader.

1. Open the demo/example of Interactive Report
2. Click on any column header (e.g Task name) to open filter popup
3. Navigate with TAB-key to the sort buttons
4. The screenreader (JAWS) doesn't remind blind people to what column the sorting will be applied.

Maybe here the information can be given (to the screenreader) that the buttons will sort the data of <column name> ascending/descending.

We reviewed this idea carefully, and while it was interesting, we concluded that it is unlikely to make its way into APEX in the foreseeable future.

Comments

Comments

  • anthony.rayner APEX Team OP 4 days ago

    Hi,

    If you compare the user experience for someone who is using a screen reader, with someone who is not..

    Non screen reader user:

    • Click on the visible ‘Task Name’ column header
    • Popup dialog opens under ‘Task Name’ column header, showing column actions and filtering.
    • Users have the affordance of the popup displaying directly under the column header text, as a reminder of where they are, if they need it.

    Screen reader user:

    • Activate ‘Task Name’ column header
    • Popup dialog opens, they are focused on the first action button
    • The popup is in a modal dialog region called ‘Column Actions’, in addition there is a visually hidden H1 element at the top of the dialog with the text ‘Actions for “Task Name” column’. With JAWS, users can press CTRL+Home to be taken to the beginning of the current context, which in this case would be straight to the H1 (they hear "Visually hidden dialog title Actions for "Task Name" column".) So users have the affordance of this hidden heading, as a reminder of where they are if they need it.

    I believe these two experiences are somewhat synonymous with each other, and I think this is the correct UX; the user activates via the column header, then they have the affordance of checking back (either visually, or via the JAWS keystroke) to get that column context again, if they need it. Furthermore, I think if we did duplicate the column name information in the button label for example, then this could easily become overly noisy for SR users.

    Regards,
    Anthony