[Diggsey]

I agree with the comment, but:

> Why? Why don't they offer the user the option to not do that?

A screen-reader doesn't replace the browser - it just responds to changes in focus by reading out a description of the currently focused item. It should be the browser that offers an option to disable autofocus. Firefox does seem to have an option in about:config called "browser.autofocus" which I assume does this exact thing.

[mwcampbell]

The screen reader could still choose to ignore the automatic focus and read the whole page instead.

[Diggsey]

How? The accessibility APIs in question just tell the screen reader when the focus changes, it doesn't say why it changed. I'm sure theres a hacky way to make it work for specific browsers, but it's the wrong place to solve the issue.