ARIA alert support

Back in 2012 I did some testing of ARIA alert support across browsers, screen readers and operating systems. The results were not encouraging. Fast forward to yesterday, while in a discussion with my TPG colleague Jonny ‘Bonny’ James I had cause to revisit the alert tests and consequently retested alert support using some of the latest screen reader and browser combinations.

The original research considered four different methods for coding role=alert messages and how well each was supported. These same 4 methods were tested again.

The four methods tested

1. createElement(), insertAttribute(), createTextNode() and appendchild()
2. innerHTML
3. display:none to display:block, display:inline etc.
4. createTextNode + constraints

Refer to original article for details

The results

Note: tested using latest versions of the browser/screen reader/OS. Combinations that are known not to work together for general HTML content access were not tested.

​Analysis

Support has improved considerably since the last round of tests in 2012. Methods 1, 2 and 3 are robustly supported by NVDA (1 and 2 only with IE), JAWS and VoiceOver. NVDA and JAWS with Edge are still not practical combinations. And unfortunately Narrator currently does not have the robust support one would expect when used with IE and Edge.