NVDA no longer renders off-screen links in Yahoo! Classic Mail inside a virtual buffer

[vtsaran]

Yahoo! Classic Mail provides several auxiliary links for screen reader users which offer additional keyboard shortcuts. These links are hidden off-screen.
As of several builds, NVDA no longer renders those links inside the virtual buffer.

Repro steps:

1. Log into your Yahoo! Classic Mail account.
2. Click on "Check Mail" or "Inbox" and open one of the messages from the list of messages.
3. On this screen there are hidden links that enable you to "Reply", "reply all", "forward" etc using access keys.

Result: NVDA does not render those links into the virtual buffer. It is, however, possible to tab to those links after switching to the "Focus Mode" with NVDA+SPACE. Additionally, NVDA does not allow executing respective access keys while "browse mode" is on.

[jteh]

Can you clarify "several builds"? When was the last build that worked? At the very least, did it work in NVDA 0.6p3.2?
What browser are you testing with? (I assume Firefox 3.5.3.)
How are they positioned off-screen? I assume you're using CSS negative positioning?

[jteh]

For reference, where on the page are they supposed to appear?

[vtsaran]

Replying to jteh:

Can you clarify "several builds"? When was the last build that worked? At the very least, did it work in NVDA 0.6p3.2?

Yes, I do remember that it used to work in NVDA 0.6.P3.2

What browser are you testing with? (I assume Firefox 3.5.3.)

Firefox 3.5.3 as well as IE8.

How are they positioned off-screen? I assume you're using CSS negative positioning?

The links are positioned off-screen using negative pixel positioning.

[vtsaran]

Replying to jteh:

For reference, where on the page are they supposed to appear?

They appear in the vicinity of the the "copy right note" in the DOM.

[jteh]

This is not a regression in NVDA. I tested this with NVDA 0.6p3.2 and could still not see these links.

Rather than being links positioned off-screen using negative pixel positioning, these links are just links with no content and a title attribute; e.g. <a href="foo" title="foo"></a> . Because there is no content, Firefox reports that the link is invisible. We intentionally ignore invisible nodes (actually, nodes with a width and height of 0). CSS negative pixel positioning should be used instead. Alternatively, the links could have a non-breaking space as their content, although I suspect this would make them visible to sighted users.

Btw, I can confirm that negative pixel positioning isn't being used because the location for the accessible object shows positive coordinates. I have confirmed that a negative location is provided where negative pixel positioning is used.

[vtsaran]

Thanks Jamie and apologies for filing an invalid ticket (and taking your time). I guess, they must have changed something. This definitely has to be fixed on our side.
I also confirmed that access keys do still work.