Accessibility issues within jQuery UI date picker control

Dear Sir/Madam,

We have recently undertaken some accessibility testing that involved the jQuery UI date picker. During this, a few issues were raised.

We're using jQuery version 3.6.3 and jQuery UI version 1.13.2. I appreciate that these are not the latest versions, but I don't see any documented enhancements in this area in newer versions, and this is what the application vendor supports at present. From their comments they are using the standard version of the control, without further customisation.

The following is the feedback I got from colleagues in digital accessibility:

JAWS
• Can use Ctrl+Home to open the calendar - But no speech to tell us it is open.
• Can also use Ctrl+Left/Right to move from day to day, but no speech either.
• Page up to move months - works, but then if you press it again it comes out of the calendar.
• When I press control up - essentially it is doing a paragraph up so comes out of the month and moves to the next text it sees above that window.

There is an option within JAWS to Pass Thru the main webpage keystroke, but this only works one time then you have to turn it on again, so it would be a total nightmare, and not many people would know about it.

If I keep my finger on the Control key and arrow up, once I set the Pass through, I can move up the dates a week at a time, but again there is no speech.

NVDA
Works a little better than JAWS in this box as it grabs the page differently, so...
• Allows Ctrl + Up/Down to be pressed. But there is still no speech as to what date you are on. So again, no very helpful.
• Allows Page Up/Down to be used to move through months, but again no speech to tell you where you are.

If it turns out that our app vendor is missing particular configuration options that address any of the above, then I'm happy to take any recommendations to them. I'd also be interested to know how you would deal with Ctrl Pageup and Ctrl pagedown, which are used to switch between browser tabs nowadays, rather than their documented keystroke of changing between next and previous year values.

Please let me know if you need any further information.

Regards,

John Barnett

Start with the standard jQuery UI date picker in version 1.13.2 and reproduce the reported keyboard behavior using JAWS and NVDA. Review the listed Ctrl, Page Up/Down, and arrow-key interactions, then document or address the missing announcements and confirm the resulting behavior with both screen readers.