Issue Summary

The search results are not defined programmatically, so screen readers cannot access or announce them.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open the Confluence Cloud Homepage.
2. Using a screen reader, navigate to the “Search” field and type any keyword.
3. Observe there are suggestions automatically populated below.
4. Notice that the screen reader does not announce that suggestions have appeared.
5. Press the Down Arrow key to navigate through the suggestions and observe that the screen reader remains silent without announcing any suggestion information.

Screen Recording

Search Issue

Actual Results

As soon as the user starts entering data in the "Search" field, search suggestions appear visually; however, the screen reader does not announce that suggestions are available. Navigating through the suggestions using the Up/Down Arrow keys does not provide any information about them. Additionally, the suggestions are not programmatically defined, making them inaccessible to screen readers. As a result, screen reader users cannot effectively perceive or navigate the search suggestions.

Expected Results

Screen reader users should be able to hear and navigate search suggestions and results as they appear.

Apply the following changes:

• When suggestions appear, the screen reader should announce the number of suggestions available (e.g., “5 suggestions available”).
• Pressing the Up/Down Arrow keys should allow the screen reader to announce each suggestion along with its position in the list.
• Provide the aria-activedescendant attribute on the <input> element containing the search field and dynamically update it to reflect the currently highlighted suggestion when navigating with Up/Down Arrow keys.
• Ensure the suggestions container has role="listbox" and each suggestion item has role="option" with a unique ID.
• Dynamically update aria-expanded to true when suggestions appear and to false when the list is closed.
• Add an aria-live="polite" region to announce the number of suggestions while typing and the number of search results after a search.

Workaround

Currently there is no known workaround for this behavior. A workaround will be added here when available

Environment