Response to your comments on Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0

Dear Deborah Dahl:



Thank you for your comments on the 24 February 2009 Last Call Working
Draft of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20090224/). The Protocols and
Formats Working Group has reviewed all comments received on the draft. We
would like to know whether we have understood your comments correctly and
whether you are satisfied with our resolutions.



Please review our resolutions for the following comments, and reply to us
by 1 February 2010 to say whether you accept them or to discuss additional
concerns you have with our response. You can respond in the following
ways:



* If you have a W3C account, we request that you respond online at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/comments/acknowledge?document_version_id=1;



* Else, by email to public-pfwg-comments@w3.org (be sure to reference our
comment ID so we can track your response). Note that this list is publicly
archived.



Please see below for the text of comments that you submitted and our
resolutions to your comments. Each comment includes a link to the archived
copy of your original comment on
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/, and may also
include links to the relevant changes in the Accessible Rich Internet
Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 editors' draft at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/20091214/.



Due to the scope of changes made in response to comments on the Last Call
Working Draft of WAI-ARIA, we are returning the specification to Working
Draft status. We will shortly publish a public "stabilization draft" of
WAI-ARIA and updated Working Drafts of the accompanying documents. While
these versions will not incorporate further discussion based on your
acknowledgement of our response to your comments, we will work with you on
your feedback as part of our preparation for the following version. You are
also welcome to submit new comments on the new public versions in addition
to sending your acknowledgement of our response to your previous comments.



Note that if you still strongly disagree with our resolution on an issue,
you have the opportunity to file a formal objection (according to 3.3.2 of
the W3C Process, at
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#WGArchiveMinorityViews)
to public-pfwg-comments@w3.org. Formal objections will be reviewed during
the candidate recommendation transition meeting with the W3C Director,
unless we can come to agreement with you on a resolution in advance of the
meeting.



Thank you for your time reviewing and sending comments. Though we cannot
always do exactly what each commenter requests, all of the comments are
valuable to the development of Accessible Rich Internet Applications
(WAI-ARIA) 1.0.



Regards,



Janina Sajka, PFWG Chair

Michael Cooper, PFWG Staff Contact


Comment 173: Use case for speech command
Date: 2009-04-17
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2009AprJun/0070.html
Relates to: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 - 1.2. Use Cases <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20090224/#usecases>
Status: Accepted proposal

-------------
Your comment:
-------------
The tags being proposed by ARIA might be picked up

by assistive technologies such as a speech-based command and control

system. For example, an assistive device for a blind person that sees an

ARIA tag 

like "menu" could speak something like "you have three choices,
chocolate,

strawberry,

or vanilla and you can only select one"? It might be helpful to

actually describe that kind of use case in the document. 

--------------------------------
Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
The ARIA use cases have been moved to the ARIA introduction section and we
have included your use case for Speech command and control systems.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


Comment 174: Audio output
Date: 2009-04-17
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2009AprJun/0070.html
Relates to: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20090224/>
Status: Alternate action taken

-------------
Your comment:
-------------
All of the roles seem to be oriented toward GUI applications, but audio

output can also potentially be part of a web application. Are there

similar abstractions over the semantic roles of audio elements? The only

reference to a possible audio interface item is an "alert", but is there

something, for example, analogous to a VoiceXML [2] prompt (that is, an

invitation to provide input)? 

--------------------------------
Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
That is correct. The intent of ARIA 1.0 was to address rich GUI- style web
applications and ensure these applications could fully support the platform
accessibility API on each operating system platform. Alerts are not
necessarily limited to "audio" as the event generated by the user agent
will also trigger the show sound feature for hearing impaired users on the
native platform. To fully address audio we need to perform an analysis of
Audio UIs. It is likely that this work would also require an expansion in
the native platform accessibility APIs supported by user agents. Since
audio element support is beyond the scope of ARIA 1.0 we have created an
issue to address support for audio UIs in ARIA 2.0. In this process we
would like to work with you and the MMI WG to gather use cases and
requirements.   

----------------------------------------------------------------------


Comment 175: modality-independent descriptions of semantics
Date: 2009-04-17
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2009AprJun/0070.html
Relates to: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20090224/>
Status: Accepted proposal

-------------
Your comment:
-------------
It seems that many of the ARIA abstractions which were 

designed to accommodate assistive devices could also potentially 

be independently helpful in multimodal applications by providing 

modality-independent descriptions of the semantics of interface
components. 

Among other benefits, this would enable application designers to
concentrate

on the semantics of an interaction rather than the details of how the

application 

is presented to the user. It would be useful to explore some of the 

ARIA ideas in the context of multimodal interaction going forward.

--------------------------------
Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
We agree that it would be valuable to explore how ARIA ideas could be used
in the context of multimodal interaction. We will attempt to set up a
meeting at the Technical Plenary although any expansion of ARIA to address
multi-modal would need to be done for ARIA 2.0.

Received on Tuesday, 15 December 2009 00:34:43 UTC