Re: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs within touch screen devices, and does ARIA apply?

James,

A VO user does care what is on the screen in a touch device.

Seems like VO gestures for 3 finger flicks for scrolling up/down and 
left/right should work. And, 3-finger tap for hearing what portion of the 
scroll is shown.

Matt King
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
I/T Chief Accessibility Strategist
IBM BT/CIO - Global Workforce and Web Process Enablement 
Phone: (503) 578-2329, Tie line: 731-7398
mattking@us.ibm.com



From:   James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>
To:     Bryan Garaventa <bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com>, 
Cc:     public-pfwg@w3.org
Date:   04/15/2014 05:47 PM
Subject:        Re: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs 
within touch  screen devices, and does ARIA apply?



Hi Bryan, 

The short answer to your question is, there is no recommended mapping, and 
since this is an HTML-specific problem, you'd be better off asking the 
HTML accessibility task force. 

The longer answer is one of general usability and assistive technology 
prerogative to make the best possible experience for the user. For 
example, I don't typically hear screen reader users asking for more 
information about the scroll views, b/c most of them don't care and 
shouldn't have to care. As long as they can navigate to all of the content 
in the scroll view, it shouldn't matter that it's in a scroll view. 

The lack of AT-triggered interaction on custom scroll views, is still 
another matter, and of the drivers behind the scrollrequest events defined 
in IndieUI Events 1.0.

Cheers,
James



On Apr 14, 2014, at 3:10 PM, Bryan Garaventa <
bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com> wrote:

This is a question I’ve been asked several times lately, and I’m not sure 
there is a suitable answer.
 
Basically, if you have a scrollable div, such as the following:
 
<div tabindex=”0” class=”scrollable”>
Internal markup and content…
</div>
 
Where the class ‘scrollable’ includes the rules for setting a specific 
height/width and overflow:auto.
 
This occurs all over the web to reduce screen real estate, and is 
happening quite a bit on mobile devices where this is premium.
 
So, for iOS touch screen devices using VoiceOver, you can move focus into 
the content region, then swipe up and down with one finger to scroll 
through the content.
E.G
http://whatsock.com/tsg/Coding%20Arena/Scrollable%20Divs/Scrollable%20Div%20(Internal%20Content)/demo.htm
 
However, there is no native way to identify when a particular region is 
scrollable. Adding role=”region” and aria-label=”Scrollable” does nothing 
at all and is not conveyed. To my knowledge, this works even less 
intuitively on the Android using TalkBack. This makes it impossible for a 
blind user to know that content is scrolled offscreen within a particular 
region of the UI.
 
The only ARIA equivalent that seems like it may have some value is 
role=scrollbar
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#scrollbar

Though this refers to a trackbar or graphic, and doesn’t actually apply in 
this case.
 
So I guess my question is, is there a documented method for implementing a 
label to convey that a region is scrollable for touch screen devices?
If there is not, should there be one?
And if there is, do touch screen devices support it?
 
I’m not sure where the breakdown is.
 
Side note: If you hear scrollable in the above demo, it’s because I 
cheated by using an offscreen positioned live region to announce 
“scrollable” when focus is first set into the region with VoiceOver 
running. No other method worked for doing this.
 
Thanks,
Bryan