Scheduler accessibility - Default spinner does not announce to screen readers Completed

Greetings,

When I was testing the Syncfusion Scheduler component, I saw that the component included it's own built-in Spinner icon, presumably for loading. I used the NVDA screen reader, and Firefox and Chrome web browsers and followed the steps below:

View a web page with the Scheduler component, and wait for it to load all of the data and finish rendering. A spinner icon will appear during this task and then disappear. I would not hear about this loading in the screen reader. When I inspected the generated HTML for the spinner, I did not see any ARIA role or attribute that would allow a text alternative message to be announced by screen readers.

The primary issue is that screen reader users should receive an equivalent notification of any loading behavior indicated by an icon, since they cannot see the icon if they are blind. Loading state can be argued to be information on the state of an application, and I do not think that the loading is a change of context either since in some cases loading of the Scheduler may not affect focus or change the overall web page. Please correct me if wrong.

Therefore, I believe the loading icon would meet the WCAG definition of a Status Message and should follow requirements of WCAG 4.1.3 to announce the status message to screen readers.

Information about icons and WCAG 4.1.3 can be found here:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/status-messages.html#non-textual-status-content

WCAG definition of a Status Message:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/status-messages.html#dfn-status-message

If you require any further information, please let me know. Thanks.

Regards,

-Ken Watson