Spinner: accessible name is set on an aria-hidden SVG and there is no status live region #8652

Component

Spinner

Description

Spinner tries to give itself an accessible name in three ways at once, and the one that actually carries the text is not the SVG:

packages/react/src/Spinner/Spinner.tsx:76

<svg
  height={size}
  width={size}
  viewBox="0 0 16 16"
  fill="none"
  aria-hidden
  aria-label={ariaLabel ?? undefined}
  aria-labelledby={hasHiddenLabel ? labelId : undefined}
  className={clsx(className, classes.SpinnerAnimation)}
  ...

The aria-hidden here makes the element — and therefore the aria-label / aria-labelledby set on it — inert. So:

• <Spinner srText={null} aria-label="Loading comments" /> produces no announced name at all: the labelled element is hidden from the accessibility tree and nothing else carries the string.
• The default <Spinner /> is announced only as a side effect of the separate VisuallyHidden node rendering the word "Loading" in the document, not because anything is labelled.
• There is no role="status" / aria-live anywhere, so a spinner that appears after a button press is not announced when it mounts. A sighted user sees motion; a screen reader user gets a static word sitting in the layout that may have been there since page load.

Worth noting the component does read the motion preference already (useMedia('(prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference)'), used only to skip the negative animation-delay that keeps multiple spinners in sync) — so the rotation itself also runs unchanged under prefers-reduced-motion: reduce. I have no opinion on whether that is right for a status indicator, and I would not change it without a call from the team.

What I'd suggest discussing

1. Put the labelling on a reachable element: either role="status" on the wrapper span with aria-label moved off the aria-hidden SVG, or keep VisuallyHidden as the only source of text and drop the dead aria-label/aria-labelledby props from the SVG.
2. Decide whether aria-hidden should stay on the SVG at all — as written it silently cancels the documented srText / aria-label API.

Either of these changes what assistive tech reports, so I would rather wait for a design call than open a PR that quietly alters announcement behaviour. Happy to implement whichever option the team picks, with a vitest assertion on the computed accessible name.