RE: Change in ARIA 1.1 breaks checkbox/radio with embedded field

Stefan Schnabel wrote:

 

> We should be aware that people always mixup things in UI’s and call that “flexible”. 

> At least the most common patterns should be supported

 

There is a difference between "mixing up the UI" and mixing up the corresponding ARIA. You can mix up UI any way you want and 9999 out of 10000 times I am sure we can get good ARIA to match it. But, mix up the ARIA and that is like lying to assistive technologies. It is like using color codes for red and expecting it to display as green.

 

To the extent we can't define a functional ARIA pattern to accurately describe a functional visual UI, we have a gap in ARIA.

 

> there are also menuitems with edit fields inside etc.

 

We can make something that looks like a menu item with an edit work with ARIA, but we will not use the menuitem role. This is the same reason that you will not use the color code for red when you want green.

 

> The list of examples may be continued easily, 

> there are also many role=”option” type listbox items out in the wild 

> that may contain interactive focusable subcontent. 

> And yes, this may be an “author error” 

> but it would be better to evolve the children concept towards something that acts more flexible here. 

 

I 100% agree that we can do things to make coding easier. Just like many coding conveniences have been added to CSS over the years, reducing the need for a lot of complex javascript. 

 

> Aria 1.1 Role=”grid” with two columns may be a substitute here 

> but a bit overboard, 

> in addition these cases are never “editable” 

> which grid items are always potentially because of grid role definition..

 

Grid is much improved now, and the listbox type thingies are probably just as easy with grid as they would be with any other ARIA roles. We just have to do a little work to get screen readers on board. But, we would have to do that work regardless of which roles are used. In fact, because grid is already a composite widget that contains structural children, it is arguably easier for the screen reader developers to adjust to this model with grid than it would be with listbox because doing so with listbox would likely require changing platform accessibility APIs in rather significant ways.

 

Matt

 

From: Schnabel, Stefan [mailto:stefan.schnabel@sap.com] 
Sent: Monday, July 3, 2017 12:32 AM
To: Aaron Leventhal <aleventhal@google.com>; ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: RE: Change in ARIA 1.1 breaks checkbox/radio with embedded field

 

We should be aware that people always mixup things in UI’s and call that “flexible”. At least the most common patterns should be supported, there are also menuitems with edit fields inside etc.

 

The list of examples may be continued easily, there are also many role=”option” type listbox items out in the wild that may contain interactive focusable subcontent. And yes, this may be an “author error” but it would be better to evolve the children concept towards something that acts more flexible here. 

 

Aria 1.1 Role=”grid” with two columns may be a substitute here but a bit overboard, in addition these cases are never “editable” which grid items are always potentially because of grid role definition..

 

-          Stefan

 

From: Aaron Leventhal [mailto:aleventhal@google.com] 
Sent: Freitag, 30. Juni 2017 21:11
To: ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org <mailto:public-aria@w3.org> >
Subject: Change in ARIA 1.1 breaks checkbox/radio with embedded field

 

ARIA 1.1 says checkbox and radio have childrenPresentational: true, whereas ARIA 1.0 didn't.

Unfortunately, this will break the following use case:

[ ] Delete mail after ___ days 

The ___ can be a textfield, combobox, etc. It's the reason that a value is part of the name computation. Unfortunately, when the parent checkbox/radio is childrenPresentational, we truncate the tree at that point and make it a leaf. So there is no object to fire events for when the embedded control gets focused.

<div role="checkbox">Delete mail after <input> days</div>

- Aaron