vsCode statusbar not properly read

[isidorn]

1. Open VS Code insiders
2. Trigger read status bar in NVDA command

VS Code issue microsoft/vscode#96392

Comments from @joanmarie on what Orca is doing in Linux

Orca is doing an accessibility tree dive from the bottom up, looking for something with the accessible role of "status bar". I recently had to change it to sanity-check candidate status bars for the "showing" and "visible" accessibility states because VSCode has -- or at least used to have -- some offscreen element with ARIA role status and no contents. Orca was finding it first and not bothering to look any further.

@feerrenrut: Yeah, I ran into that Chrome hit-test thing myself in a different context. Orca now asks twice -- at least for the place where the issue came up.

[feerrenrut]

I think this issue should be specific to vsCode. The browser case is a little more tricky since browsers may have their own window chrome status bar in addition to any HTML defined status bar, though I'm happy for that to be split into a separate bug. It may be that for "browser based" applications that don't have a status bar (most these days) we use appModules to opt-in to retrieving the status bar from the content.

See PR for overriding status bar with app modules: #9792

[Adriani90]

Cc: @josephsl, @JulienCochuyt is this a candidate for a custom status bar? Or is this not possible in web apps?

[feerrenrut]

@josephsl you may have missed that this issue is about vsCode. Which we can easily have an appModule for with it's own strategy for getting the status bar. The two candidates strategies for fixing the current issue (caused by inaccurate results hit-testing in chromium) are:

• When status bar isn't found, wait and try again.
  • Chromium needs to re-render and cache the area to get accurate hit test information.
• As Orca does, search the accessibility tree from the bottom up, looking for something with the accessible role of "status bar".

@isidorn I have removed the following browser based steps to reproduce from the issue description to try to keep this on track. To fix this for general web apps running in any browser will require a number of different considerations. Hope you don't mind.

Removed from initial description

Alternative repro steps for a general web page:

1. Have a web page with a role=status element
2. Open that web page in chrome
3. Trigger the NVDA command to read status bar -> "No status line found" is read 🐛

I'm happy for anyone to turn this into a new issue, where the comment from @josephsl is very relevant. @josephsl I'll hide your comment for now to prevent de-railing this issue.

[josephsl]

Hi,

Ah, makes more sense. In this case, I think @LeonarddeR is in the best position to take a look at this more thoroughly (I don't use VS Code at this time).

Thanks.

[isidorn]

@feerrenrut I do not mind. Thanks for looking into this!

[isidorn]

Friendly ping regarding this issue. Are there any updates or plans to tackle this one?

[feerrenrut]

Sorry @isidorn we haven't been able to prioritize this yet.

[Adriani90]

@cary-rowen, @mltony, @LeonarddeR is this issue still existing with NvDA 2024.3 beta?

[Adriani90]

We didn't hear any updates from users who could reproduce it in the past upon request since more than 3 years. I am closing as abandoned. If you are still having this issue, please comment and we can reopen.

[cary-rowen]

I have to say, if you have tried the latest VS Code you will easily reproduce, the issue with NVDA not reporting the status bar.

[Adriani90]

Thanks for the update.

[hwf1324]

I have to say, if you have tried the latest VS Code you will easily reproduce, the issue with NVDA not reporting the status bar.

Please note that this is a different issue than #17339.

microsoft/vscode#96392 (comment)

However, there is no doubt that this issue still exists.

Even after using the fix add-on, the status bar is only reported correctly after the first reading of the status bar.