Staging Review finding: Nothing announced to screen reader users when requesting images

[shiragoodman]

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This ticket was part of a merged Staging Review with MHV Medical Records Download Records, Flow/Images and Settings

Product Information

Team: vfs-mhv-medical-records
Product: MHV Medical Records
Feature: Phase 1 Radiology Flow/Images, Download Records, and Settings

Findings details

VA.gov Experience Standard - issue: User experiences an unexpected interaction with a component or pattern.
VA.gov Experience Standard - category: Usability
Launch-blocking: Yes
Design System review: No
Collab Cycle Reviewer: @briandeconinck (Accessibility)

Description

When requesting radiology images, users press the "Request images" button which opens an info alert with a progress bar. However, screen reader users don't hear anything, and are left to guess what's happening. Is their request in progress? Did the button not work? Is the page broken? Generally speaking, making a user guess what's happening is poor form.

Link, screenshot or steps to recreate

Recommended action

Keyboard focus is lost when the "Request images" button disappears, and it needs to go somewhere. I think the "Image request" H3 would be appropriate, although I'd encourage a future iteration to find more descriptive text for that heading (like "Image request in progress" or something similar). Sending focus to that heading means screen reader users get immediate feedback that something is happening, and they know there's a section of content beneath the H3 that will provide them more information about their image request.

References

• Accessibility Defect Severity: 1: Critical. Must be fixed before launch.
• WCAG Success Criteria: N/A
• Modality: Screen reader
• Design System Component: N/A
• Design System Pattern or Template: N/A
• Design System Foundation: N/A
• Content Style Guide: N/A
• Context: N/A

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