custom-select

My version of a custom select input, with filtering

The process

https://24ways.org/2019/making-a-better-custom-select-element/

A demo

https://codepen.io/stringyland/pen/a7106a2577dbc246875275a7c8182abf

To Do

• Move status update to start on first focus, not on page load
• Add the high-contrast focus indicator back (not sure when that got removed?)
• Add aria-selected attributes to makeChoice, remove on clearValue
• check arrow navigation works in all screen readers
  • problems in JAWS/Chrome during filtered state
  • Talkback/Chrome/Android not working well
  • NVDA/Firefox seems ok, continue testing
• Update pattern to ARIA 1.2 - still only a recommendation for the next version, but Sarah Higley's usability testing (https://www.24a11y.com/2019/select-your-poison-part-2/) showed it gave the best results
• Update script so that both Enter and Space open the list
• Make the arrow icon pointer-only
• See if I can make the list appear above or below the input based on available screen space

Questions

• What would the impact be of removing aria-controls attribute? It causes older JAWS to give additional instructions which are inaccurate.
• Or should there be instructions at all? Excess instructions are usually annoying. On the other hand it's a custom widget, so people might not have encountered an input like it before and filtering isn't necessarily an intuitive interaction.