"disabled" options are still used by autocomplete

If I have a select field like this:

<select name="test" id="test">
  <option value="">Select...</option>
  <option value="a">A</option>
  <option value="b" disabled>B</option>
  <option value="c">C</option>
</select>

And enable autocomplete like this:

<script>
  accessibleAutocomplete.enhanceSelectElement({
    defaultValue: '',
    selectElement: document.querySelector('#test')
  });
</script>

Then if I type “B” in the autocomplete input field, B is chosen. I would expect it to not be available.

(I can imagine there might be good reasons why gov.uk doesn’t use disabled – maybe it’s poor accessibility? Some other reason? In which case I understand why this doesn’t support the option 😃 But as an outsider using this otherwise excellent tool, this was unexpected behaviour.)

[hannalaakso]

@philgyford We’re prioritising bug fixes over new feature development for the accessible autocomplete right now so we won’t be able to work on this at the moment. But thanks for flagging it, it’s good to have it recorded 👍

[edwardhorsford]

@philgyford I designed the original Accessible Autocomplete together with @tvararu.

I don’t think we explicitly didn’t support it so much as not building for it as it wasn’t a priority or used by GOV.UK. In other cases where services can’t control the markup we’ve provided some disabled styles -but in this case we’d have expected the service must have control of the markup so can avoid disabled, etc.

The sorts of selects you get in government services don’t generally have need for disabled items (clothing sizes out of stock, etc)

@nickcolley I assume the preferred solution would be for the disabled options to still be shown, but somehow indicated as not selectable.

I can see good reasons why someone might want a disabled option - though it might take some work - as you’d need to work out how to communicate to this to AT, and handle focus keyboard movement through the options.