ARIA - Screen reader does not announce that user in a text field inside of combobox

[Confidenceman02]

When a user keyboard focuses into the select the voice over and screen reader does not announce that the element is a combobox. The reason this happens is because keyboard focusing does not open the menu and thus does not render a <ul> element with the role=listbox.

Conversely, click focusing onto the select opens the menu and correctly renders a <ul> with role=listbox. The screen reader correctly announces that the user is in a text field inside of a combobox.

Proposed solution

By default even with the menu closed, if the select is focused we should be rendering a <ul> with role=listbox for the screen reader to correctly announce the element as a combobox.