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

Dear Maciej Stachowiak:

Thank you for your comments on the 15 December 2009 Working Draft of
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20091215/). 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 9 December 2010 to say whether you accept them or to discuss additional
concerns you have with our response. If we do not hear from you by that
date, we will mark your comment as "no response" and close it. If you need
more time to consider your acknowledgement, please let us know. 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=6;

* 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/20101202/.

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 330: ARIA "status" role definition should make clear that it is intended to be a status bar
Date: 2010-08-26
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2010JulSep/0024.html
Relates to: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 - status (role) <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20091215/#status>
Status: Accepted proposal

-------------
Your comment:
-------------
The ARIA definition of the "status" role says:

------------ 
A container whose content is advisory information for the user but is not
important enough to justify an alert. Also see alert. Authors MUST provide
status information content within a status object. Authors SHOULD ensure
this object does not receive focus.

Status is a form of live region. If another part of the page controls what
appears in the status, authors SHOULD make the relationshipexplicit with
the aria-controls attribute. 
------------

This seems very general, and like something that could apply to the HTML5
<output> element for instance. However, according to Steve Faulkner, this
is meant to be mapped to a status bar role in platform accessibility APIs,
which would likely make it inappropriate for <output>.

--------------------------------
Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
We have changed the definition of status bar to: 

A container whose content is advisory information for the user but is not
important enough to justify an alert, often but not necessarily presented
as a status bar. 

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


Comment 331: Please clarify ARIA definition of "grid" role
Date: 2010-08-26
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2010JulSep/0025.html
Relates to: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 - grid (role) <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20091215/#grid>
Status: Accepted proposal

-------------
Your comment:
-------------
ARIA has the following definition of the "grid" role:

------------ 
A grid contains cells of tabular data arranged in rows and columns, like a
table.

Grids do not necessarily imply presentation. The grid construct describes
relationships between data such that it may be used for different
presentations. Grids allow the user to move focus between cells using two
dimensional navigation. For example, grid might be used as the invisible
data model (hidden with CSS but still operable by assistive technologies)
for a presentational chart. 
------------

This seems like an exact match for the HTML <table> element, which
contains cells of tabular data arranged in rows and columns, like a table.
According to Steve Faulkner, however, this role is only supposed to be used
for *interactive* presentations of tabular data arranged in rows and
columns. 

--------------------------------
Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
We agree with your comments and the last call draft now contains your
suggested text at: http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#grid which is A grid
is an interactive control which contains cells of tabular data arranged in
rows and columns, like a table. We have added text to the abstract class
widget of which grid is a descendant: When a user navigates an element
assigned any of the non-abstract subclass roles of widget, assistive
technologies that typically intercept standard keyboard events SHOULD
switch to an application browsing mode, and pass keyboard events through to
the web application.

Received on Thursday, 2 December 2010 22:31:39 UTC