Grid: Column headers announce "press Enter to sort" even when sorting is disabled

[anshika.chakrawarty]

Hi,

We're using a Bryntum TreeGrid with sorting explicitly disabled at the feature level:

features: {
    sort: false
}

Some columns also set

sortable: false

at the column level as an additional safeguard.

The problem:

When a screen reader user navigates to a column header, assistive technology announces that the user can "press Enter to sort" the column. However, pressing Enter does nothing because sorting is disabled. This is misleading for keyboard-only and screen reader users — they are told about an interaction that doesn't exist.

It appears that Bryntum's internal ARIA markup on column header elements includes a sort-related instruction (likely via aria-label, aria-description, or a visually hidden text node) regardless of whether the sort feature is actually enabled.

Expected behavior:

When sort: false is set on the grid (or sortable: false on a column), the column header should not include any ARIA text or screen reader announcement referencing sorting. The header should only describe its actual interactive capabilities.

Our question:

Is this a known issue — ARIA sort instructions being present on headers when sorting is disabled?
Is there a configuration option or workaround to suppress the sort-related ARIA text on column headers?
If not, could this be addressed in an upcoming release so that the ARIA attributes on headers respect the sort feature and sortable column settings?

[ahmadzaheer]

Hello Anshika,

I see that "Press Enter to Sort" is part of the column label if we set the sort : false in the features.
But if we set sortable : false on the column config, it removes this from the label. I have tested here https://bryntum.com/products/grid/examples/tree/.

Can you please verify again whether setting sortable : false on the column disables this or not. If not can you please share the version of grid you are using.

In the meantime we will fix the issue so that it should not imply sorting in the label when sort feature is turned off. Here is a ticket for that: https://github.com/bryntum/support/issues/12943