Does faceted search fail accessibility?
Forms that use faceted search filtering present a series of categories to filter search results by. Selecting a filter option will typically auto-submit the form instantly and present the filtered search results. This is a good UX for regular users but what about disabled users?
My concern is over accessibility guideline 3.2.2 "On Input" https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/on-input.html
One of the fail examples it gives is "F36: Failure of Success Criterion 3.2.2 due to automatically submitting a form and presenting new content without prior warning when the last field in the form is given a value"
Failure Example 2:
This is an example that submits a form when the user selects an option from the menu when there is no warning of this behavior in advance. The form will submit as soon as an item from the menu is selected. A user using a keyboard will not be able to navigate past the first item in the menu. Blind users and users with hand tremors can easily make a mistake on which item on the dropdown menu to choose and they are taken to the wrong destination before they can correct it.
Faceted search isn't quite the same as that example but it is very similar. Select an option and the faceted search will automatically submit the form and present new data to the user.
It's easy enough to still pass this criterion by simply warning users that the form will filter the search results as they select categories to filter by. My question is, do we really need to include this warning to pass accessibility on a faceted search?
There seems to be many sites that use faceted search that do not include this warning.