Accessibility improvement: read selected options when selecting a new option or when focusing the input

[richieri]

Hi! I'm working with tom-select in a project and we are really glad it covers many of our needs, including being one of the most ready-to-accesibility tools we found.

The only thing in terms of accessibility I couldn't make tom-select do is to make NVDA (a screen reader software) read the current selected option of an input when you navigate using the keyboard to an input.

When you focus the input it won't speak the current values of the input and I believe this is important for people to know what is already there.

I tried to simulate some quick fixes for that. The one that seems most promising I think is to have a hidden element that gets updated when a new option is selected or when user focuses on the option. This element must have aria-live="polite" and aria-atomic="true" accessibility tools will read it whenever its content gets updated.

NVDA link: https://www.nvaccess.org/download/