VO doesn't indicate when Voicing switch is dimmed

[Nancy-Salpepi]

Test device
MacBook Air M1 chip

Operating System
13.4

Browser
Safari 16.5

Problem description
For phetsims/qa#961, with Audio Features switched off, VO will indicate that the Sounds and Play Shape Sounds Forever buttons are dimmed, but it doesn't indicate that the toggle for Voicing is. It also indicated that the , Shape Sounds Options selected radio button is dimmed, but it is a little hard to catch.

Steps to reproduce

1. Turn on VO
2. Tab to the Audio Tab of the Preferences dialog
3. Turn off Audio Features
4. Tab through the rest of the buttons in this tab.

Visuals

Voicing.dimmed.mov

[jessegreenberg]

Hmm, this is strange. Definitely a bug but nothing is obvious yet. I can't reproduce with Windows, NVDA correctly says "Voicing, switch, unavailable".

The container for all of this content correctly has the aria-disabled=true. There is no difference in the markup for these two controls

<button role="switch" aria-pressed="true" aria-checked="true">Voicing</button>
<button aria-pressed="true" aria-checked="true" role="switch">Sounds</button>

[jessegreenberg]

This is not a problem for macOS 11.7.6, Safari Technology Preview 15.4 or Safari 16.2. VO correctly indicates the switch is "dimmed".

[jessegreenberg]

@terracoda can you please try to reproduce this problem on your machine? Can you think of anything else to investigate?

[terracoda]

This is not a problem on MacOS 12.6.2

@Nancy-Salpepi can you try enabling the Voicing and then disabling Audio features.

It seems like the only difference is that the Voicing switch is off. It should still say "dimmed, off switch", but I am wondering if that is what is triggering the buggy behaviour.

Adding
@jessegreenberg, are their any lost ARIA semantics when that particular switch is in the off position?

[terracoda]

If that doesn't change anything and the code is all the same, I reccommend @jessegreenberg write up an apple bug, and please note the bug report number and we can email the apple accessibility devs. They have been responsive to other issues, and they will need the bug report number.

[jessegreenberg]

This came up during standup today, and while we would like to learn more and will probably submit a bug report to Apple, this doesn't block publication since there is nothing we can do to change the behavior.

[Nancy-Salpepi]

@terracoda @jessegreenberg I looked at it a bit more just now.....VO will initially say that the Voicing switch is dimmed (when it is enabled or disabled). If I then go to the localization tab, change the locale, and then switch back to English that will result in VO no longer saying "dimmed" for Voicing.

[terracoda]

Thanks @Nancy-Salpepi.
@jessegreenberg is it possible that something strange is happening to the aria attributes when the locale is switched?