#35870: Allow customization of the blank option in select dropdowns
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
Reporter: Marijke Luttekes | Owner: Marijke
| Luttekes
Type: Bug | Status: assigned
Component: Forms | Version: 5.0
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: accessibility | Triage Stage: Accepted
Has patch: 0 | Needs documentation: 0
Needs tests: 0 | Patch needs improvement: 0
Easy pickings: 0 | UI/UX: 0
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Changes (by Thibaud Colas):
* owner: Thibaud Colas => Marijke Luttekes
* type: Cleanup/optimization => Bug
Comment:
Here are the results of my testing across six screen readers:
1. NVDA 2024.4, Chrome: no announcement
2. JAWS 2024, Chrome: "dash dash dash" (no matter how many dashes there
are)
3. Narrator 21H2, Microsoft Edge: "dash" sometimes, sometimes no
announcement
4. VoiceOver macOS 14.1, Safari: no announcement
5. VoiceOver iOS 17, Safari: "nine hyphens"
6. Talkback Android 11, Chrome: "nine dash"
Here’s the full recording: [https://youtu.be/HMtEkAaJgWk (YouTube) Django
accessibility testing: dash dash dash (empty select widget)]. And if
anyone wants to do their own testing, here’s my demo page:
[https://thibaudcolas.github.io/django_admin_tests/latest/english/admin/demo/artist/3Rp3pcr8W9rhgF8YhHqplP/change/
Django 5.2 admin change artist - Eno • Hyde].
So it’s only NVDA and VoiceOver macOS that have no announcement at all,
but the "dash" announcements in other screen readers aren’t particularly
helpful either. I would qualify this bug as a failure of WCAG SC 1.3.1
Info and Relationships.
==== Proposed changes
The above confirms a strong need to change the default. And we could also
make this value more easily customize-able. Based on this testing, if we
want to keep using dashes in combination with an intelligible label, I
think the fewer dashes the better – one or two. A single dash/hyphen will
probably be more likely to be skipped by screen readers. I’m not sure if
this is a win or not. For example, I see the
[https://designsystem.digital.gov/components/select/ USWDS design system]
uses this: "- Select -". Perhaps "- Empty -", so we don’t confuse people
that the field doesn’t necessarily need filling in as Claude mentioned?
Assigning back to you Marijke for you to proceed as you see fit.
--
Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/35870#comment:13>
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