WCAG 2.1 violation in Express Map block's key

erinchambers

If this has already been discussed, I apologize - I tried searching for as many keywords as I could before posting.

In map blocks, the key/legend has an unordered list (<ul>) of clickable locations, which works fine for visual and keyboard navigation. However, the list items (<li>) are all assigned the button role, (role="button"), which is not valid—and it's a WCAG 2.1 violation that results in screen reader users not being told how many items are in the list. This becomes a huge problem with robust map blocks that have dozens—or more—of locations to tab through.

There's a good explanation at dequeuniversity.com/rules/axe/4.12/list (and I apologize, I can't link the text because my account isn't old enough).

I'll defer to others more knowledgable than me, but ideally the legend would use a semantic element like <button> or <a> inside each list item, rather than assigning a clickable role to the list item itself.

Is this something that could be addressed? I ask because we're a government educational institution in the U.S., and we have a deadline of April 26, 2027 for all of our content to meet WCAG 2.1 (per federal ADA Title II regulations). We love the Express maps in the StoryMaps we use for teaching and research, but we will have to remove them by the deadline if there are violations.

Thanks for everything you do!

oevans_storymaps

@erinchambers - Thanks for reporting this. We can look into it, but I would also recommend submitting an Esri Support incident if you would like a formal way to track the status of this issue.