PSA for Android devs using Jetpack Compose with TalkBack: ExposedDropdownMenuBox breaks linear swipe navigation order.

[tamasg@mindly.social]

PSA for Android devs using Jetpack Compose with TalkBack: ExposedDropdownMenuBox breaks linear swipe navigation order. It creates internal Surface nodes with isTraversalGroup = true, which makes TalkBack sort your dropdowns into completely wrong positions in the swipe order — even though explore-by-touch works fine.
The fix: replace ExposedDropdownMenuBox with plain Box + DropdownMenu. You lose the auto-width matching (easy to add
back with onGloballyPositioned) but gain an accessibility tree that actually works.
isTraversalGroup on parent sections didn't help either — the rogue groups inside the Material component override it.
#Android #A11y #JetpackCompose #TalkBack #Accessibility

[vick21@mastodon.social]

@Tamasg Wow, what are you doing there?

[tamasg@mindly.social]

@vick21 oh, I ran into this oddly for the TGSpeechBox Settings UI but all this work especially with getting Jetpack compose stuff to have proper roles and sound good with Talkback will be really useful for work too, no doubt, so I'm not upset at all going a bit more out of my web-centric comfort zone. xD