[Bug 23545] section should only map to region if the section has an accessible name

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23545

Rich Caloggero <rjc@mit.edu> changed:

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                 CC|                            |rjc@mit.edu

--- Comment #9 from Rich Caloggero <rjc@mit.edu> ---
>How is the noise currently manifested?

See the following page which presents output generated by Jaws and NVDA in
Firefox (results are similar with IE). Have not tested with VoiceOver on MacOS.

http://www.mit.edu/~rjc/aria/section.html

Jaws is the most noisy, producing both a  start and end message for every
region.  It also produces a landmark marking the start of the region, and adds
this to its landmarks list.  The usefulnes of landmarks is diminished as their
number increases, and since many authors are now using section as a stand-in
for div, this can completely flood the landmarks list with useless unnamed
entries, making the entire list useless for that document.

NVDA, the other popular windows screen reader, neither creates start messages
for sections, nor does it create a landmark.  Essentially, NVDA treats them as
divs. 


>What provides an accessible name for the section? Is it supposed to come from related heading?

Accessible names are never recognized by NVDA on sections (nor by any other
region roles). Jaws modifies the accessible name on all region roles via
aria-label, aria-labelledby, and title, which is the propper behavior as far as
I can determine from the spec.

Neither jaws nor NVDA handle outlining (as discussed in section 4.4.10
(Headings and sections) of
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#headings-and-sections



In my opinion as a screen reader user, neither Jaws nor NVDA handle sections
(or regions in general) correctly. 
- sections should only be mapped to region role if they have an accessible
name;
- accessible names should be user-definable by aria-labelledby, aria-label, and
title on all sectioning elements as defined by the above referenced spec

However, according to the spec, and confirmed in the document referenced above,
adding role="presentation" to a section tag causes jaws to completely ignore it
(i.e. region / region end messages disappear from the virtual buffer and the
region is removed from the landmarks list)!! Perhaps this is how the community
should remediate this issue until browsers and/or screen readers (specifically
Jaws) change the way they handle section.

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Received on Monday, 18 November 2013 19:24:29 UTC