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

It might also help if I explain the use case I have in mind.

 

Last month I was working on a project that included two scrollable regions, these were Divs that used overflow:auto. The goal was to achieve responsive design for both desktop and mobile device support, so it needed to be accessible from the keyboard and using touch screen devices at the same time.

 

Both Divs were positioned side by side, so both appeared in the viewport at the same time. The left Div included a list of dates ranging from prehistoric times till the present, and the right Div included a timeline where all relevant dates included important events that occurred during that time frame. You had the option of scrolling through the dates on the left and activating one so that it would automatically scroll that date range into view on the right, or you had the choice of manually scrolling through all events listed on the right.

 

The use of tabindex solved keyboard accessibility, and visually there were borders to separate the sections, and the browser handled the scrolly thingies so everything looked and acted as expected for sighted users.

 

The issue though, had to do with touch screen devices. There is no supported mechanism for conveying the separation between scrollable regions when using a screen reader.

 

So, if you use VoiceOver for example, and you move focus between each region from left to right, there is no way to tell which region is scrollable, and no way to determine where one ends and another begins.

 

This may not be an ARIA issue, but it seems like the role of region and the use of aria-label should be available for this purpose.

 

 

 

 

 

From: Richard Schwerdtfeger [mailto:schwer@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 3:15 PM
To: Bryan Garaventa
Cc: 'James Craig'; Matthew King; public-pfwg@w3.org
Subject: RE: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs within touch screen devices, and does ARIA apply?

 

Bryan, we make use of CSS scrollable <divs> in Dojo mobile. As you navigate, say with voiceover, it scrolls fine. The scrollable div speaking is not an aria issue. Are you labelling the regions? 

Rich


Rich Schwerdtfeger

"Bryan Garaventa" ---04/16/2014 01:35:06 PM--->Most users would not want such a verbose output, because so many views are scrollable. The scrollba

From: "Bryan Garaventa" <bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com <mailto:bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com> >
To: "'James Craig'" <jcraig@apple.com <mailto:jcraig@apple.com> >, Matthew King/Fishkill/IBM@IBMUS
Cc: <public-pfwg@w3.org <mailto:public-pfwg@w3.org> >
Date: 04/16/2014 01:35 PM
Subject: RE: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs within touch  screen  devices, and does ARIA apply?

  _____  

 

>Most users would not want such a verbose output, because so many views are scrollable. The scrollbars are likewise irrelevant if the user can change the scroll position via some other mechanism such as linear navigation or in this case, a gesture.

 
This is part of the problem I’m referring to though. Here is a conversation that I’ve recently been having about this
 <http://lnkd.in/b-gg2tZ> http://lnkd.in/b-gg2tZ
 
When there are multiple scrollable regions within the same viewport, there is no way to determine which is which, nor which are scrollable and which are not.
 
 
 
From: James Craig [mailto:jcraig@apple.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 6:07 PM
To: Matthew King
Cc: public-pfwg@w3.org <mailto:public-pfwg@w3.org> 
Subject: Re: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs within touch screen devices, and does ARIA apply?
 
 
On Apr 15, 2014, at 5:53 PM, Matthew King <mattking@us.ibm.com <mailto:mattking@us.ibm.com> > wrote:

James, 

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

 
No disagreement here. That works as expected. 

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. 

 
That works too. If you have a test case where it doesn't, please file a bug at bugreport.apple.com <http://bugreport.apple.com/> .
 
Usability decision of a particular screen reader is outside the scope of PFWG, but since Matt seems to have misunderstood my implication, I'd like to clarify… briefly. Bryan's comment was about explicitly interacting with scrollbars, and hearing regions announced as "scrollable." Most users would not want such a verbose output, because so many views are scrollable. The scrollbars are likewise irrelevant if the user can change the scroll position via some other mechanism such as linear navigation or in this case, a gesture.
 
Cheers.
 

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
 <mailto:mattking@us.ibm.com> mattking@us.ibm.com 



From:        James Craig < <mailto:jcraig@apple.com> jcraig@apple.com> 
To:        Bryan Garaventa < <mailto:bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com> bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com>, 
Cc:         <mailto:public-pfwg@w3.org> 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 <mailto: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> 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> 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