The Siteimprove accessibility testing tool raised
an issue with our having a div with role=region in
the page that was:
- empty
- with no label
The status has a role of 'region' which makes it a
generic landmark. This means that, unlike <nav>
or <footer>, users don't get any hint of its
purpose from its HTML tag. If we did want this,
we'd have to give it a label to explain that.
I don't think we do want those things. I think
it's more of a sentence that sits between the
searchbox and the results, just saying how many
are there.
That being the case, we should just remove the
role. It's also what design system do with their
character count, which is similar:
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/character-count/
Unlike that component, I don't think we need to
use aria-describedby to set the status as the
description of the searchbox because it describes
the results, not the search term.
This change has been made because autofocus has been confusing
to users of screenreaders because they orient themselves by
what is in focus. Moving it when the page loads without warning
can cause confusion and mean they miss parts of the page
before the point focus has moved to.
So now we will only turn on autofocus if there are no other
elements in the page that need attention than the search box.
If there is a search term when the page loads, a
statement about the results is added to the
searchbox label.
All subsequent searches are announced via an aria
live-region.
Changes those fields in the following forms:
- SearchByNameForm
- SearchUsersByEmailForm
- SearchUsersForm
- SearchNotificationsForm
Includes changes to templates that use this form
and associated tests.
