Defining a behavior on hover means making it different for people using
a keyboard or a touchscreen (most of the population, nowadays).
In this case, we had an accessibility issue where the message wouldn't
disappear once it appeared. That meant that, after tabbing through all
the links and buttons in, for instance, the debates index, the page
would be filled with "participation not allowed" messages, and in order
to see the information about how many people have voted, reloading the
page was required.
For touchscreen users the behavior was similar to what we get on hover,
although we've found some inconsistencies when trying to support several
elements on the same page.
We think in proposals it makes sense to hide the "support" button when
users click on it, and the same applies to the buttonsto support and
vote investment projects. However, we aren't hiding the buttons to
agree/disagree with a debate in order to keep the information about the
current number of people agreeing and disagreeing visible.
Note we're removing some support spec methods because after these
changes the duplication isn't as obvious as it was in the past.
The `sign_in(nil)` method was a bit hard to understand IMHO. After all,
in controller and system tests we don't have to specify no user is
signed in; that's the default behavior.
So we're making it the default behavior for component tests as well.
Note we don't cast negative votes when users remove their support. That
way we provide compatibility for institutions who have implemented real
negative votes (in case there are / will be any), and we also keep the
database meaningful: it's not that users downvoted something; they
simply removed their upvote.
Co-Authored-By: Javi Martín <javim@elretirao.net>
Co-Authored-By: Julian Nicolas Herrero <microweb10@gmail.com>
If I'm right, the `investment_votes` instance variable only exists to
avoid several database queries to get whether the current user has
supported each of the investments.
However, that doesn't make much sense when only one investment is shown.
In this case, the number of queries stays the same, and so we can
simplify the code by rendering the component with an optional parameter.
Using links combined with JavaScript to generate POST requests to the
browser has a few issues.
An obvious one is that it doesn't work for users without JavaScript
enabled (which lately I've noticed are more common than I thought, even
though I've been one of them for years). These users will reach a 404
page.
Since CONSUL isn't currently designed to work without JavaScript
enabled, let's ignore this one for now.
A not so obvious issue is screen reader users might expect the link to
take them somewhere instead of performing an action (in this case,
sending a form to the server).
There might be more issues I'm unaware of. Quoting DHH [1]:
"Turning ahrefs into POSTs is a bit of an anti-pattern, especially for
a11y reasons. Better to use button_to with a styling."
So we're using a button instead. This way we can also simplify the code
and make the button disabled for unidentified users, which automatically
makes it impossible to focus it using the keyboard.
A possible disadvantage of using `button_to` is it will create a form
tag which will be announced to screen readers as a form landmark. I've
tested it with my screen reader and everything worked fine for me, but
some screen reader users might interact with these forms in a different
way and find it confusing, particularly in the case where the button is
disabled.
With this change, we're only changing links for buttons in one place.
There are other places where we should do similar changes.
[1] See issue 33 in https://github.com/hotwired/turbo-rails/
In regular system tests, we prefer testing against the text of the link
because it's easier to recognize which link we're talking about.
I was wondering whether we should remove the `title` attribute
completely and use just the `aria-label` attribute. Quoting The Paciello
Group blog [1]:
"If you want to hide content from mobile and tablet users as well as
assistive tech users and keyboard only users, use the title attribute."
However, there's a case where mouse users might find the title attribute
useful. When visiting an investment page, the connection between the
"Support" link and the investment is not as clear as it is in the
investments index page, so it might not be clear what you're supporting.
As mentioned, though, this information will only be relevant for mouse
users, who nowadays represent less than half of our users.
[1] https://www.tpgi.com/using-the-html-title-attribute-updated/
This way blind screen reader users will know which project they're
supporting. In a list of investments, context might not be clear when a
link saying "Support" or "Support this project" is announced, but a link
saying "Support Renovate sidewalks in Main Street" is less ambiguous.
When identified users accessed the investments page, we were using the
`aria-hidden` attribute to hide this link from screen readers since
unidentified users can't support investments.
However, the link was still focusable using keyboard navigation. This
resulted in screen reader users reaching the link and being able to
click it, but getting no feedback at all about where they were or what
they were clicking on.
This is why the fourth ARIA rule says: "Do not use role="presentation" or
aria-hidden="true" on a focusable element" [1].
So we're replacing the link with a non-interactive element instead, like
we do in other places like proposals.
The accessibility of this part of the page for unidentified users still
has some issues; here we're only improving it up to a certain point.
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/#4thrule