Issue Summary

The option names within the comboboxes are not announced by the screen reader.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open the Jira DC instance.
2. Navigate to the header section and activate the "Create" control to open the "Create Issue" modal.
3. Using a screen reader, navigate to the mentioned comboboxes.
4. Press the "Alt + Down Arrow" key and use the "Down Arrow" key to navigate through the options.
5. Observe that the options are not announced by the screen reader.

Screen Recording

Dropdown screen recording.mp4

Actual Results

When screen reader users navigate through the options within the comboboxes, such as "Project", "Issue Type", "Fix Version/s", "Priority", "Sprint", "Labels", and others in the "Create Issue" modal, the option names are not announced. Instead, the screen reader remains silent, even though the options are changing visually.

As a result, screen reader users are unable to interact with the options in these comboboxes and find it difficult to navigate through the available choices.

Expected Results

Ensure that the option names in the combobox are announced for screen reader users.

In this case, Along with defining role=“combobox”, “aria-expanded”, “Aria-controls”, “aria-haspopup”, on the <input> element.

The <input> element should {{Use "aria-activedescendant" }}attribute to determine the active option. This attribute uses the "id" of the active option.

On the parent <ul> containing the list of options, use role="listbox". On the child <li> elements, use role="option". As well, use aria-selected attribute to programmatically determine the selected option.

Alternatively:

Make sure that the option names of the combobox are announced by the screen reader along with the focused value and number of results.

For instance, when user focuses on first combobox option out of 4 items. It should announce as “option <option name> focused, 1 of 4. 4 results available”.

The part of static text i.e “option focused, 1 of 4. 4 results available.” coming from live region and in <span> element should be updated with option name programmatically according to user interaction with this combobox options.

For more information refer the following resource:

ARIA Combobox Pattern

Workaround

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

Environment

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021)
macOS Sonoma 14.7
Operations - Windows11
Chrome - Version 133.0.6943.127 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Safari- Version 18.0
Firefox- Version 135.0 (64-bit)
JAWS- Version 2023 and 2025
NVDA- Version 2024.4.2
VoiceOver - Version Latest