RE: text role removal

James,

As I recall, the fundamental objections were related to both the utility and
the risks of the role. In all the use cases that were presented, all the
screen reader users in the working group were in agreement that the text
role did not provide better accessibility than the image role. In every use
case we examined, either the text role was hiding something that was useful
or the image role was as good or even better fit.

There were also questions surrounding what should happen with selection for
copy and paste and how AT could access appropriate context actions. And,
there were concerns in the mapping discussion with respect to the list of
conditions that should override the text role. 

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: James Craig [mailto:jcraig@apple.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 4:45 AM
To: Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com>
Cc: Birkir Gunnarsson <birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com>; Accessible Rich
Internet Applications Working Group <public-aria@w3.org>; Steve Faulkner
<faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: text role removal


> On Jun 20, 2016, at 1:01 PM, Bryan Garaventa
<bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com> wrote:
> 
> From what I remember, this was removed due to the inability to handle the
scenario of author error when role="text" were applied to the body tag of a
webpage, which would destroy all child contents. This came up during one of
the UAIG calls.

We addressed this point prior to it's inclusion in the spec, and even
included some serious author warnings.

The resolution of that discussion was that the benefits of tools used
correctly outweigh the risks of their potential misuse. In other words, the
occasional smashed finger doesn't negate the usefulness of a hammer.

James

Received on Thursday, 23 June 2016 20:54:56 UTC