USWDS - Memorable date: Dropdown search functionality doesn't meet some users' expectations.

[jaclinec]

Summary

Users, especially those with visual impairments, expect to be able to search by typing either the number or the name for the month in memorable date. The combo box for the 'month' input in memorable date only allows for typing the number of the month, but usability testing showed that it'd be beneficial to allow for both name or number searching.

Observations

This mostly applied to participants who are visually impaired (2 blind, 2 low vision) in our testing, although we did have one 'typically sighted' participant who commented that we should allow users to search with either name or number.

Those with visual impairments who typed in the combo box to search for and select a month were split on what they typed: half of them typed the number (for example, "01" for January) and half typed the name of the month (e.g. "D" for December). The combo box does not allow searching my month name which was a friction point for those users. See video clip 🔒

Affected user groups

• Screen reader users
• Visually impaired
• All users

Research method

Usability testing with 8 participants with disabilities:

• 5 visually impaired (3 blind, 2 low vision/legally blind (1 with nystagmus))
• 1 motor impairment
• 1 ADHD
• 1 anxiety and depression

Screen reader software participants used: JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver

[Link to public findings report forthcoming...here is the internal Zebra findings report] 🔒

Next steps

• Update combo box search functionality that allows users to search by either the month name or number. This solution could be affected/combined by the work we're doing in Combo box search results do not match user expectations #5647

Note: This issue is related to #5911

[mejiaj]

USA Memorable date shown here uses USA Select, not USA Combo box.

Todo

• See if we can make USA memorable date more responsive to keyboard input (modifying markup).
• Confirm if USA Combo box is a viable replacement
  • If it is, confirm if we need to enhance combo box

Assigning it to upcoming sprint simply for exploring improving HTML improvements.

[annepetersen]

This is moving forward, @jaclinec, but could you do a little more desk research here on if it may be best practice to include one or the other rather than both, and if so which one?

Development-wise, making this dropdown search both name and number us to use combo box in this, which will introduce more problems than it will solve.

Dev team seems to be leaning toward month-only rather than number here. A half-half one round of testing result makes this call a tough one. This is scheduled, but can we do the research in the meantime?