On Demand Live Regions

A tiny module for making screen readers announce text on demand, without a visual change to the interface. Initializing and using the live region is as simple as:

const liveRegion = new OnDemandLiveRegion()

liveRegion.say('Hello World!')

Installation

Just grab the minified version or install from NPM:

npm i on-demand-live-region

Settings object

• level — the live region level (default: polite)
• parent — the element to which the live region will be appended (default: body)
• idPrefix — the prefix for the unique id generated for the live region (default: live-region-)
• delay — the delay in milliseconds before the phrase is announced (default: 0)

Assertive example with a half second delay

const liveRegionDelayed = new OnDemandLiveRegion({
  level: 'assertive',
  delay: 500
})

liveRegionDelayed.say('Hello World! (sorry, delayed reaction)')

You can override the delay setting in a second argument when calling say:

liveRegionDelayed.say('Hello World! (sorry, delayed reaction)', 1000)

Say it over and over

Each time you use the say method, the extant live region (if it exists) is destroyed and a new one created. This means you can reliably make the same announcement multiple times. This is not guaranteed in other implementations, where a persistent live region is repopulated.

Tested in

• Safari with VoiceOver
• Chrome with VoiceOver
• IE11 with JAWS
• Chrome with JAWS
• Firefox with NVDA
• Chrome with ChromeVox