RE: [Accessibility-ia2] Mapping of aria-errormessage for ATK/AT-SPI2 and IA2

Joseph, based on what you wrote here, it sounds like error messages are a type of element rather than a relationship.

A field could be described by multiple elements, and one of those elements could be an error message and others could be arbitrary elements that somehow describe the field.

Makes me wonder if we should have an errormessage role and then have the element with role errormessage be related to a field via aria-edescribedby. 

Matt


-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Scheuhammer [mailto:clown@alum.mit.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 2:01 PM
To: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com>; 'Joanmarie Diggs' <jdiggs@igalia.com>; 'James Teh' <jamie@nvaccess.org>
Cc: 'IA2 List' <Accessibility-ia2@lists.linux-foundation.org>; 'ARIA Working Group' <public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: Re: [Accessibility-ia2] Mapping of aria-errormessage for ATK/AT-SPI2 and IA2

On 2016-04-13 11:46 AM, Matt King wrote:
> When aria-errormessage was first discussed, my understanding was that the purpose is to distinguish an error message from a description so that assistive technologies would have the option to give it special treatment. 
>
> Is there more to it than that?

Aria-errormessage is tied to aria-invalid.  The error message is relevant only when the input is invalid.  In contrast, descriptions have no specific dependency on validity.

Based on that, the error message is presented only when the input is invalid.  For a sighted user, the error message is not rendered unless or until the user has input invalid information.  At that point the error message is shown near or "attached" to the invalid input.  If the user corrects the input, the error message vanishes, thereby providing reinforcement that the error has been corrected.  On the other hand, the description is presented on demand -- for example, as a tooltip when the user mouses over the control.  A corollary is that the error message conveys a sense of urgency or obligation -- something needs to be fixed
-- whereas the description does not.

--
;;;;joseph.

'Die Wahrheit ist Irgendwo da Draußen. Wieder.'
                 - C. Carter -

Received on Thursday, 14 April 2016 15:20:31 UTC