Improve Accessibility in the Block List

[maxme]

Users should be able to focus each block using the keyboard (or native accessibility features).

We should probably set the accessible attribute to true on the root BlockHolder element.

More info here: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/accessibility.html

[guarani]

Hey @maxme – regarding the external keyboard aspect of this, there's an issue on Android where after moving focus away from a rich text, it's difficult to bring focus back to it to continue editing:

^{The ripple effect is when I'm tapping space bar on the external keyboard which should focus the rich text but doesn't}

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On iOS, I didn't find any issues when editing with an external keyboard (on an iPhone with Full Keyboard Access enabled in device accessibility settings).

I'm looking to see if the fix will be in RN or native, but since rich text is Aztec and this issue is not present on iOS, it may be an Aztec-Android issue.

Can I get confirmation this is the sort of issue you were referring to in this ticket?

[guarani]

The Android-specific keyboard issue mentioned above seems related to native Aztec code on Android. @hypest suggested commenting out these two sections of code to see if they're causing the issue.

gutenberg-mobile/react-native-aztec/android/src/main/java/org/wordpress/mobile/ReactNativeAztec/ReactAztecText.java

Lines 228 to 229 in dd2a9a7

	setFocusableInTouchMode(false);
	setFocusable(false);

and

gutenberg-mobile/react-native-aztec/android/src/main/java/org/wordpress/mobile/ReactNativeAztec/ReactAztecManager.java

Lines 107 to 108 in a4419c3

	aztecText.setFocusableInTouchMode(false);
	aztecText.setFocusable(false);

I commented these out, ran yarn android, and this indeed improves things—I'm now able to move focus between rich text areas using only the keyboard.

Screen recording

I think this will need an Android developer (cc @marecar3 @cameronvoell) if we want to make this fix permanent.
Also, I noticed that when using tabs to navigate, the first tab highlights a block and the second puts the cursor on it (focuses it). When the block is highlighted (first tab press), subsequently hitting Space Bar probably should (?) allow you to use the block toolbar buttons (e.g. undo/redo/delete), but it instead sends the focus back up to the heading block, which seems incorrect (see below gif).

Screen recording

[hypest]

but it instead sends the focus back up to the heading block, which seems incorrect

I think that's the first Aztec isntance claiming focus, exactly the issue those lines I suggested you try to remove are trying to combat actually. So, I think for this quick experiment, yes, it's expected to see this side effect when commenting them out.

[hypest]

This ticket is not worked on at the moment so, I'll clear the assignee field to denote so.