Legion System Update #3: Keyboard Access, and Fewer Boxes

Welcome to Legion System Update #3.

Two themes this week. One is about being able to use the site. The other is about the bit that happens after a victor wins, which is the bit I think matters most.

Neither involves a single new pixel. Lewis is relieved.

1. The entry dialog now works without a mouse

When you enter a quest, a dialog opens to ask the skill question and add your tickets to the basket.

It looked fine. It did not work properly if you couldn't, or didn't want to, use a mouse.

Opening it left your keyboard focus on the page behind it. Pressing Escape did nothing. Close it and you were dropped somewhere unhelpful. A screen reader user got a dialog that wasn't properly announced as one.

So I've fixed all of that:

• Focus now moves into the dialog when it opens.
• Tab and Shift+Tab stay inside it, instead of wandering off into the page behind.
• Escape closes it, and focus goes back to the button you pressed to open it.
• The skill question's answers are now a proper group, with the question attached to them, and the arrow keys move between them.
• The answer you're on shows a clear focus ring.
• The free-text answer has a proper label.
• Errors are announced as they appear, rather than sitting there silently in red.
• The little step dots now have a text version, "Step 1 of 2", for anyone who can't see them.

If you want the technical version, this covers WCAG 2.2 criteria 2.4.3, 2.4.7, 1.3.1, 3.3.2, 4.1.2 and 4.1.3. I would like to claim I knew those numbers off by heart. I did not.

None of it changes how entering works. The question is the same, the tickets are the same, and so is the price. It just works for more people than it did.

I haven't finished checking the rest of the site. If you use a keyboard or a screen reader and something gets in your way, tell us. That one's a bug.

2. Getting prizes to victors, properly

Winning is the exciting part. Getting the prize to your door is the part that has to actually work.

Two improvements this week, both on our side of the process.

One box, not several. If you win more than one prize and they're going to the same address, they can now travel together in a single parcel, rather than as a scattering of separate packages.

That's fewer boxes arriving on different days, and fewer chances for one of them to go missing. It also helps if you've claimed a physical instant win alongside a quest prize.

There's a safety catch. If your prizes have been confirmed to different addresses, nothing gets packed together until we've chosen one deliberately. We won't quietly send a prize somewhere you didn't ask for to save a box.

Tracking and despatch still follow every item, so each prize shows what's happening to it.

Tracking numbers that catch up. Sometimes the tracking number for a Royal Mail parcel is only issued after we've printed the label. Until now, that meant the number could turn up late on our side, or need adding by hand.

We now check for it automatically. When Royal Mail issues the number, it's attached to your prize without anyone needing to type it in, and the despatch is picked up when the parcel leaves us.

A caveat: not every prize goes by tracked post, and in that case your dispatch email will say there's no tracking available. That hasn't changed.

Another caveat: we can see when a parcel has left us, but Royal Mail's system doesn't tell us when it lands on your doormat. If it doesn't turn up when you expect it, get in touch and we'll chase it.

3. What happens next

Another update, next week.

It might be big. It might be a fix and a joke. Either way, you'll hear about it here.

Rob remains at the computer.

He has pressed Tab more times this week than in the previous ten years. It went where he expected, which was new.