JAWS doesn't announce role="region"

Question

I just installed JAWS ( version 2024.3 for Windows 10 )

I tested the WCAG recommended audio player called AblePlayer

The HTML for this player uses role="region" aria-label="audio player" so you'd expect all screen readers to announce something like "audio player" or "this is a region"

But JAWS does not - it doesn't announce of the information in that HTML snippet

I find JAWS consistently disregards role="region"

But it does announce other things like role="navigation or <nav> tags

This JAWS github issue makes me extra confused https://github.com/FreedomScientific/standards-support/issues/709

The github comments say that <div role="region" aria-label="This is a region" supposedly is announced as "This is a region"

But when I test the codepen in that github issue using my JAWS installation it will not announce anything for that region.

---

One HTML example...

<h1>My page</h1>

<div role="region">
 <a href="https://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo</a>
</div>

<div role="region" aria-label="My fancy region">
 <a href="https://www.google.com">Google</a>
</div>

<div role="navigation">
 <a href="https://www.bing.com">Bing</a>
</div>

...this will be announced by my JAWS install in the following way:

Heading level 1, my page
Link, yahoo
Link, google 
Navigation region
Link, bing
Navigation region end

Questions

1. Is this JAWS output is expected?
2. Is role="region" something to be avoided as it lacks support in screen readers? What should we use instead - to announce something for a component like an AudioPlayer?

Answer 1

Solved. My JAWS settings specify that region is never announced.

Jaws has 3 levels of Verbosity: Low, Medium, High.

I was using the default Medium setting and that is configured to not announce regions.

• It will announce <main>, <nav>, <article> - and equivalents like region="navigation"
• It will not announce role values like application, banner, form, region, search region and more....

Screenshot:

JAWS Setting Center

Web > Reading > Web Verbosity Level > Configure Web Verbosity Level > Regions: Application