adobe / adobe/react-spectrum

Table (VO) - keyboard navigation announces not focused cell

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#7,734 2 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
needs investigation
Dominant language
TypeScript
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Description

### Provide a general summary of the issue here

When using VoiceOver to navigate within a table that has custom React Aria-based keyboard navigation, there is a noticeable delay in cell announcements.

For example, in a 3x3 table:

Moving from Row 2, Cell 2 → Row 2, Cell 1 → Row 2, Cell 2,
VO might get stuck announcing Row 2, Cell 1, instead of updating to Row 2, Cell 2 if you're fast enough.

### 🤔 Expected Behavior?

VO should announce the actual focused cell

### 😯 Current Behavior

If change happened fast enough VO announces previous cell.

### 💁 Possible Solution

_No response_

### 🔦 Context

_No response_

### 🖥️ Steps to Reproduce

1. Open https://react-spectrum.adobe.com/react-aria/examples/stock-table.html
2. Activate VO
3. Try navigating between cells
4. If you're fast enough focused cell will differ from the VO announcement

### Version

1.4.1

### What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

Chrome

### If other, please specify.

_No response_

### What operating system are you using?

MacOS - 15.2 (24C101)

### 🧢 Your Company/Team

_No response_

### 🕷 Tracking Issue

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the stock-table example at https://react-spectrum.adobe.com/react-aria/examples/stock-table.html and reproduce the timing issue with VoiceOver on macOS and Chrome. Inspect the React Aria table keyboard-navigation entry points used by that example, then verify that rapid movement between cells causes VoiceOver to announce the actual focused cell rather than the previous one.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
react, typescript
Domain
accessibility, frontend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

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