## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9304
### Proposed Changes
Fixes non-visual parent roles and rendered connection navigation policy.
### Reason for Changes
Other PRs have made progress on removing extraneous accessibility nodes with #9446 being essentially the last of these. Ensuring that parent/child relationships are correct is the last step in ensuring that the entirety of the accessibility node graph is correctly representing the DOM and navigational structure of Blockly.
This can have implications and (ideally) improvements for certain screen reader modes that provide higher-level summarization and sometimes navigation (bypassing Blockly's keyboard navigation) since it avoids an incorrect flat node structure and instead ensures correct hierarchy and ordering.
It was discovered during the development of the PR that setting `aria-owns` properties to ensure that all focusable accessibility nodes have the correct parent/child relationships (particularly for blocks) isn't actually viable per the analysis summarized in this comment: https://github.com/RaspberryPiFoundation/blockly/pull/9449#issuecomment-3663234767. At a high level introducing these relationships seems to actually cause problems in both ChromeVox and Voiceover.
Part of the analysis discovered that nodes set with the `presentation` role aren't going to behave correctly due to the spec ignoring that role if any children of such elements are focusable, so this PR does change those over to `generic` which is more correct. They are still missing in Chrome's accessibility node viewer, and `generic` _seems_ to introduce slightly better `group` behaviors on VoiceOver (that is, it seems to reduce some of the `group` announcements which VoiceOver is known for over-specifying).
Note that some tests needed to be updated to ensure that they were properly rendering blocks (in order for `RenderedConnection.canBeFocused()` to behave correctly) in the original implementation of the PR. Only one test actually changed in behavior because it seemed like it was incorrect before--the particular connection being tested wasn't actually navigable and the change to `canBeFocused` actually enforces that. These changes were kept even though the behaviors weren't needed anymore since it's still a bit more correct than before.
Overall, #9304 is closed here because the tree seems to be about as good as it can get with current knowledge (assuming no other invalid roles need to be fixed, but that can be addressed in separate issues as needed).
### Test Coverage
No automated tests are needed for this since it's experimental but it has been manually tested with both ChromeVox and Voiceover.
### Documentation
No documentation changes are needed for these experimental changes.
### Additional Information
Note that there are some limitations with this approach: text editors and listboxes (e.g. for comboboxes) are generally outside of the hierarchy represented by the Blockly workspace. This is an existing issue that remains unaffected by these changes, and fixing it to be both ARIA compliant and consistent with the DOM may not be possible (though it doesn't seem like there's a strong requirement to maintain DOM and accessibility node tree hierarchical relationships).
The analysis linked above also considered introducing a top-level `application` role which might change some of the automated behaviors of certain roles but this only seemed to worsen local testing with ChromeVox so it was excluded.
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9495
### Proposed Changes
Changes a bunch of ARIA role & label management to ensure that `Flyout` acts like a list rather than a tree.
### Reason for Changes
`Flyout`s are always hierarchically flat so it doesn't make sense to model them as a tree. Instead, a menu is likely a better fit per https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/Reference/Roles/menu_role:
> A `menu` generally represents a grouping of common actions or functions that the user can invoke. The `menu` role is appropriate when a list of menu items is presented in a manner similar to a menu on a desktop application. Submenus, also known as pop-up menus, also have the role `menu`.
However, there are important caveats that need to be considered and addressed:
- As discussed below, menus introduce some unexpected compatibility issues with VoiceOver so this PR presently uses `list` and `listitem`s as a slightly more generic enumerating alternative for menus.
- Menus (and to some extent lists) are stricter\* than trees in that they seem to impose a requirement that `menuitem`s cannot contain interactive elements (they are expected to be interactive themselves). This has led to a few specific changes:
- Block children are now hidden when in the flyout (since they aren't navigable anyway).
- Flyout buttons are themselves now the `menuitem` rather than their container parent, and they no longer use the role button.
- Menus aren't really expected to contain labels but it isn't inherently disallowed. This is less of an issue with lists.
- Because everything must be a `listitem` (or a few more specific alternatives) both blocks and buttons lack some context. Since not all `Flyout` items can be expected to be interactive, buttons and blocks have both had their labels updated to include an explicit indicator that they are buttons and blocks, respectively. Note that this does possibly go against convention for buttons in particular but it seems fine since this is an unusual (but seemingly correct) utilization of a `list` element.
- To further provide context on blocks, the generated label for blocks in the `Flyout` is now its verbose label rather than the more compact form.
\* This is largely a consequence of a few specific attributes of `menuitem` and `menu`s as a whole and very likely also applies to `tree`s and `treeitem`s (and `list`s and `listitems`s). However, now seemed like a good time to fix this especially in case some screen readers get confused rather than ignore nested interactive controls/follow semantic cloaking per the spec.
Demo of it working on VoiceOver (per @gonfunko -- note this was the `menu` variant rather than the `list` variant of the PR):
### Test Coverage
This has been manually tested with ChromeVox. No automated tests are needed as part of this experimental change.
### Documentation
No new documentation changes are needed for this experimental change.
### Additional Information
None.
* feat: Use custom ARIA roledescriptions for different block types
* fix: Don't include 'begin stack' in block ARIA labels in the flyout
* fix: Fix visibility of `computeAriaLabel`
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes part of https://github.com/RaspberryPiFoundation/blockly-keyboard-experimentation/issues/764
Fixes part of #9450 (infrastructure needs)
### Proposed Changes
Introduces support for two new "where am I?" shortcuts for helping to provide location context for users:
- `I`: re-reads the current selected block with full verbosity (i.e. also includes the block's field types with their values in the readout).
- `shift+I`: reads the current selected block's parent with full verbosity.
Note that this includes some functional changes to `Field` to allow for more powerful customization of a field's ARIA representation (by splitting up value and type), though a field's value defaults potentially to null which will be ignored in the final ARIA computed label. This seems necessary per the discussion here: https://github.com/RaspberryPiFoundation/blockly/pull/9470/files#r2541508565 but more consideration may be needed here as part of #9307.
Some limitations in the new shortcuts:
- They will not read out anything if a block is not selected (e.g. for fields and icons).
- They read out input blocks when the input block is selected.
- They cannot read out anything while in move mode (due to the behavior here in the plugin which automatically cancels moves if an unknown shortcut is pressed: a36f3662b0/src/actions/mover.ts (L166-L191)).
- The readout is limited by the problems of dynamic ARIA announcements (per #9460).
### Reason for Changes
https://github.com/RaspberryPiFoundation/blockly-keyboard-experimentation/issues/764 provides context on the specific needs addressed here.
### Test Coverage
Self tested. No new automated tests needed for experimental work.
### Documentation
No new documentation needed for experimental work.
### Additional Information
This was spun out of #9470 with the intent of getting shortcuts initially working checked in even if the entirety of the experience is incomplete.
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9464
### Proposed Changes
Adds ARIA labels for `Toolbox` and `Flyout` ('s `Workspace`) containers to complement their existing region labels.
### Reason for Changes
In some cases certain screen readers (like NVDA) don't read out region labels. Previously, only the region labels provided context for currently being within the toolbox or flyout, so adding additional labels on the ARIA `tree` containers themselves ensures that these contexts are always read if the tree's context is read.
This adds redundancy with the region output if both are read, but ChromeVox at least adds some delay between finishing the tree's context and beginning the region's context and this seems to mesh well together. The fully read context now feels like: "here's an item, it's the toolbox tree, and that tree is within the toolbox region." Even though both regions only contain a single tree it doesn't feel dimorphic.
### Test Coverage
No new automated tests are needed for this experimental change.
This has been manually tested with ChromeVox to demonstrate the dual tree + region output for both toolbox and flyout:
[Screen recording 2025-11-26 2.52.22 PM.webm](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/aa43ae81-9da6-4c79-b0fc-120146892aae)
### Documentation
No new documentation is needed for this experimental change.
### Additional Information
This was only tested on ChromeVox.
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9451
### Proposed Changes
Removes the ARIA `region` role for both flyouts and workspaces that are within mutators.
### Reason for Changes
The use of the `region` role only adds confusion and slightly messes up region announcements for screen readers. `generic` has been used instead since it's the default container role (e.g. for `div`) and seems sufficient for what needs to be described in this case.
Note that the delayed initialization for the flyout role is due to flyout initialization happening a bit later than its workspace DOM creation (so it doesn't seem possible to check for mutator status yet). There might be ways of doing this a bit more cleanly as part of #9307.
### Test Coverage
No automated tests are needed for this experimental change. Manual testing comprised of navigating between the main workspace, the main workspace's toolbox and flyout, and a mutator workspace and flyout to validate that no unusual region readouts were happening. The accessibility node tree was also analyzed to verify that `generic` is correctly being applied as the role for the mutator workspace and flyout.
### Documentation
No new documentation is needed for this experimental change.
### Additional Information
This doesn't fully resolve all region issues, but it resolves the main ones (especially when combined with #9483 for NVDA). The main remaining problem at this point is that the main workspace itself is usually not read out as a region and it's not clear why. I suspect it has something to do with focus manager and how it automatically moves focus, but I'm not entirely sure what specific mechanism is causing the problem since both toolbox and flyout do something similar and don't have the same issue (flyout is particularly noteworthy since it's a workspace in itself).
There may be some other focus oddities happening to cause the difference but, for now, this seems reasonable. If testing or user feedback find that the lack of consistent region readout is problematic for the main workspace then a new issue can be opened and investigated separately.
## The basics
- [ ] ~I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)~ (I can't really due to the nature of this change--I have to rely on tests and external testing)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes part of #9456 (remainder will be in a change in the keyboard navigation plugin)
### Proposed Changes
Introduce and use new `Block` function for retrieving a configurably constrained singleton field for a given block. The constraints allow for some level of configuring (such as whether to isolate to only full or editable blocks). The existing simple reporter function has been retrofitted to use this new function, instead.
### Reason for Changes
This expanded support fixes the underlying use case.
Separately, this change reveals two noteworthy details:
1. There's inconsistency in the codebase as to when the singleton field needs to be editable, a full-block field, both, and neither. It would be ideal to make this consistent. Interestingly, the documentation for `isSimpleReporter` seems to have been wrong since it wasn't actually fulfilling its contract of returning an editable field (this has been retained for callsites except where the check was already happening).
2. There's a possible recursion case now possible between `getSingletonFullBlockField` and `isFullBlockField` due to `FieldInput`'s `isFullBlockField` depending on `isSimpleReporter`. Ideally this would be changed in the future to avoid that potential recursion risk (possibly as part of #9307).
### Test Coverage
No new automated tests are needed for this experimental work. Manual testing mainly comprised of cursory navigation and readout checks for single-field blocks to make sure nothing breaks. More thorough testing is difficult in core since the specific situation of multiple fields don't have a corresponding block to use in the playground to verify.
Automated tests are also being heavily relied on for correctness since all of the nuance behind the simple reporter cases would require a deeper testing pass.
### Documentation
No new documentation needed for this experimental work.
### Additional Information
None.
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9461
### Proposed Changes
Remove image-specific ARIA properties (role and label) for the current selected item in `FieldDropdown`.
### Reason for Changes
This intentionally changes a behavior introduced in #9384 because the alternative ARIA behavior works better. As the images in #9461 show the actual focus outline when the current drop-down value has ARIA properties goes to that element (separate from active focus in this case) since the screen reader will read out those properties. However, this makes the reader lose context on the combo box itself.
This basically goes away from leveraging active descendant (though that's still necessary for correct combo box implementation) and just forces the label in a way that keeps the combo box context. Text-based combo boxes already do this, so this change simply brings image-based items in alignment with text combo box behaviors.
### Test Coverage
No new automated tests are needed for this experimental change. Manual testing was done via core Blockly's advanced playground (using the 'test blocks' toolbox).
### Documentation
No documentation changes are needed.
### Additional Information
None.
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9466
### Proposed Changes
Ensures `FieldInput`'s ARIA labels are recomputed when an invalid value is attempted to be set.
### Reason for Changes
Previously the `FieldInput` would continuously update its ARIA label as the value changed, including for invalid values. If the editor was cancelled this would correctly revert but if an invalid value was attempted to be saved then it would cancel the update but not correct the ARIA label.
### Test Coverage
No new tests are needed for this experimental change. This has been manually verified locally using `FieldNumber` in Core's advanced playground.
### Documentation
No documentation changes are needed for this experimental change.
### Additional Information
None.
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9301Fixes#9312Fixes#9313
Fixes part of #9304
### Proposed Changes
This introduces a variety of specific changes to resolve several issues for screen reader work, including introducing fundamental support for field labeling.
Specifically:
- Field labels have been simplified to only use their custom defined ARIA name otherwise they are null (and thus should be ignored for readout purposes) which wraps up the remaining high-level work for #9301 (#9450 tracks more specific follow-up work to improve upon what's been established at this point). The PR also introduces an ARIA override for number inputs in math blocks so that the readout is correct for them.
- Bubble labeling is more explicit now which is useful for mutators (#9312), warnings, and comments. The general improvement for bubbles wraps up the remaining work for #9313 as well since the core issue was resolved in #9351. By default a bubble has no ARIA label.
- #9304 is partly being addressed here with the change to field images: they are no longer being added to the accessibility node tree unless they are actually navigable (that is, clickable). Part of #9304's goal is to remove extraneous nodes.
- Finally, a typo was fixed for 'replaceable blocks' since these were not reading out correctly. This was noticed in passing and isn't directly related to the other issues.
### Reason for Changes
This PR is largely being used as a basis for one particularly significant issue: #9301. Field labeling has undergone several iterations over the past few months and the team seems comfortable sticking with a "do as little as possible" approach when determining the label, thus justifying the need for expecting more specific customization (i.e. #9450). To this end it's important to be clear that getting fields to a good state is not actually "done" but the need to track it as a large incomplete thing has ended. Note that one important part of #9301 was updating field plugins to be accessible--this largely seems unnecessary as-is as it will be completely dependent on the needs of future user tests. The long-term plan will need to account for making all fields in `blockly-samples` accessible (per #9307).
Some of the terminology used here (e.g. for bubbles) will likely need to change after user testing, but it's important to establish that _something_ correct is communicated even if the terminology may require scaffolding and/or refinement.
It's important to note that while non-clickable field images are no longer in the node graph, their ARIA presence still exists as part of the fluent block labeling solution. That is, `FieldImage`'s alt text is used as part of constructing a fluent block label (sometimes to confusing effect--see #9452).
### Test Coverage
No tests needed since these are experimental changes and do not change existing test behaviors.
### Documentation
No documentation changes are needed for these experimental changes.
### Additional Information
None.
- Use Path objects from pathlib to handle file paths properly
- Generate output files in the same directory as input file
- Create output filenames with "new_" prefix while preserving original stem name
- Ensure script works with files from any location in the filesystem
## The basics
- [x] I [validated my changes](https://developers.google.com/blockly/guides/contribute/core#making_and_verifying_a_change)
## The details
### Resolves
Fixes#9447
### Proposed Changes
Pin the `actions/first-interactions` action to v1.3.0 and update the input parameters. Configure Dependabot to no longer try to upgrade this version.
### Reason for Changes
There are three sets of failures being addressed here:
1. `v3.0.0` introduces a breaking changes by renaming the input names.
2. `v3.1.0` introduces a breaking change that somehow enforces `issue_message` being required which isn't being defined for Blockly (we only welcome on PRs). This hasn't been addressed by the action author so this PR pins to v3.0.0 to go back to a working version.\*
3. `v2` introduced a breaking behavioral change that caused all runs of the workflow to outright fail by not being compatible with `pull_request_target`.
\* Technically it was broken when upgraded in #9323 due to a warning (rather than error) enforcing the now-required parameters. That was hiding a failure introduced when upgraded in #9274 that outright broke the workflow due to it running with `pull_request_target`.
### Test Coverage
The team doesn't utilize automated tests for the workflow configurations themselves thus verifying them through running CI is sufficient.
https://github.com/BenHenning/blockly/pull/16#pullrequestreview-3400731300 demonstrates this passing and working correctly with a merged in version of this branch (since the workflow uses `pull_request_target` it cannot be verified in this PR's CI workflow) for a 'new' contributor (thanks for the help @rpbourret and @maribethb).
### Documentation
No documentation changes are needed for this workflow configuration change.
### Additional Information
Nothing to add that's not above or in the filed bug.
* docs: vectorize README.md sample image
change head to the logo, change image to transparent svg. other minor changes.
* docs: README.md: revert to h1, fix link
the previous commit was reviewed by rpbourret, this commit fixes the issues mentioned
