Due to https://g-issues.chromium.org/issues/40875151 (I filed it against Chromium, but all browsers have it; it's a missing piece in the ARIA spec), I've been having difficulty finding a combination of DOM structure and ARIA attributes for plain text that would satisfy all screen readers. Currently, text is rendered into semantics like this:

<flt-semantics style="position: absolute;
                      width: 814px;
                      height: 809px;
                      top: 0px;
                      left: 0px;
                      pointer-events: all;">
  Hello, World!
</flt-semantics>

All screen readers are able to find this text and read it to the user correctly. However, some screen reader + browser combos, e.g. VoiceOver on macOS, ignore the size information specified on the element, and instead tightly hug the text that's inside the element:

The framework means the box containing the text to cover the whole screen with the "Hello, World!" text centered horizontally inside it. However, the DOM used to report semantics to screen readers is unaware of all this. All it gets is the rect of the box (0, 0, 814, 809) and the label ("Hello, World!"), and there does not seem to be a way to publish such box via anything DOM and ARIA provide.

Repro:

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:flutter/semantics.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(const MyApp());
  SemanticsBinding.instance.ensureSemantics();
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({super.key});

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Plain text accessibility',
      theme: ThemeData(
        primarySwatch: Colors.blue,
      ),
      home: Text('Hello, World!', textAlign: TextAlign.center),
    );
  }
}

Methods tried before

• Set aria-label and no DOM text inside:
  • Breaks JAWS (and JAWS refuses to fix it).
• role="text"
  • Supported by Safari <16 (and used to work perfectly), but alas, Safari 17 removed it.
• Other roles: "group", "static"
  • Sizes the ring correctly but breaks the traversal with "end of $LABEL, grou" wording after every text element.
• Adding hidden content inside the node (to avoid "empty group")
  • Hidden content gets collapsed as if the node never had it, so it has no effect.

Links

• Various discussions of role="text" removal:
  • WebKit intends to drop its never-standardized text role implementation w3c/aria#2011
  • https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260641
  • Consider early re-add of role=text w3c/aria#870
• JAWS:
  • JAWs can no longer read plain Text Widget's content. #122607
  • JAWS on Chromium-based browsers ignores empty DOM nodes with aria-label FreedomScientific/standards-support#759
• Internal Google issues:
  • http://b/334798120
  • http://yaqs/8749427549701931008