Response to your comments on WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation Guide

Dear Aaron Leventhal:

Thank you for your comments on the 10 January 2012 Last Call Working Draft
of WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation Guide
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-wai-aria-implementation-20120110/). 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 21 September 2012 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. 

We have sent this response shortly before publishing a planned updated
draft of the WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation Guide. This document is
being returned to ordinary Working Draft because the group found
ambiguities in user agent implementation expectations. If your concerns are
still open in this document, you may submit a new comment on that version
in addition to acknowledging our response to your prior comment. The group
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Please see below for the text of comments that you submitted and our
resolutions to your comments. 

Note that if you still strongly disagree with our resolution on an issue,
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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 WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation
Guide.

Regards,

Janina Sajka, PFWG Chair
Michael Cooper, PFWG Staff Contact


Comment 373: Processing of landmark and fallback roles
Date: 2012-03-16
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2012JanMar/0013.html
Relates to: WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation Guide - 5.4. Role mapping <http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-wai-aria-implementation-20120110/#mapping_role>
Status: Declined to process

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Your comment:
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This is similar to a comment I sent to wai-xtech on the same topic.

This affects: 

- The ARIA implementation guide 
- Browser implementations of the ARIA role attribute and platform
accessibility APIs 
- Flexibility in where ARIA landmarks can be used in content 
- Forward/backward compatibility of content with updates to the ARIA spec
and/or browsers

Firefox and WebKit-based browsers handle landmarks differently.

WebKit implements the current ARIA implementation guide at
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#mapping_role -- "For the
standard role mechanism of the accessibility API, the user agent * MUST*
use the first token in the sequence of tokens in the role
attribute<http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#def_attribute> 
value <http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#def_value> which
matches, on comparison, the name of any non-abstract WAI-ARIA role."

Firefox/Gecko implements an older version of the implementation guide at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-implementation-20090224/#mapping_role
"The first role token with a known mapping to accessibility APIs SHOULD be
used when mapping to the accessibility API via the standard role mechanism
of the accessibility API. Use the role table below and apply any special
case rules that are specified."

In other words, when processing role="far bar baz", we used to map the
first role corresponding to a platform API role. Now we stop at the first
non-abstract role, and go no further.

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Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
This comment arrived after the deadline for submitting comments and is a
complex issue. We would like your help in resolving it prior to publishing
the Last Call draft.

Received on Wednesday, 15 August 2012 19:45:02 UTC