Re: ACTION-1440: landmarks section uses "region of page" in prose even though "region" is not a landmark

Fred, this proposal maintains support for the generic landmark region you 
describe without making the landmark role concrete. Those product teams 
can continue their current practice of using role="region" in conjunction 
with aria-labelledby. 
In fact, adopting this proposal would codify that what those product teams 
are already doing is appropriate. The proposal says to:
1. expose role region when the region is labeled.
2. Defining a landmark so that it is either an element with a specific 
"type" of content or a region with a label that identifies the purpose of 
the content.
3. Suggesting to AT with a "MAY" statement that it is appropriate to treat 
labeled regions as landmark regions.

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

Fred Esch/Arlington/IBM@IBMUS wrote on 12/02/2014 05:41:02 AM:

> From: Fred Esch/Arlington/IBM@IBMUS
> To: WAI Protocols & Formats <public-pfwg@w3.org>, 
> Date: 12/02/2014 05:41 AM
> Subject: Re: ACTION-1440: landmarks section uses "region of page" in
> prose even  though "region" is  not a landmark
> 
> Matt,
> 
> I generally agree with what you are saying except for not making 
> landmark concrete. Products I deal with would like a landmark that 
> they could label and don't think the regions they are producing 
> match well to the HTML elements with default landmark roles. 
> 

> 
> Regards, 
> 
> Fred Esch 
> Accessibility, Watson Innovations
> AARB Complex Visualization Working Group Chair 
> [image removed] 
> 
> [image removed] 
> 
> 
> 
> [image removed] Matthew King---12/01/2014 10:56:55 PM---After 
> today's lengthy discussion of action 1440, I gave the issues raised 
> during the call a fresh l
> 
> From: Matthew King/Fishkill/IBM@IBMUS
> To: WAI Protocols & Formats <public-pfwg@w3.org>
> Date: 12/01/2014 10:56 PM
> Subject: ACTION-1440: landmarks section uses "region of page" in 
> prose even though "region" is  not a landmark
> 
> 
> 
> After today's lengthy discussion of action 1440, I gave the issues 
> raised during the call a fresh look. A difficulty facing several of 
> the proposed solutions, which was pointed out several times by James
> Craig, is that in addition to landmark, other subclasses of region 
> include alert, article, grid, list, log, status, and tabpanel. I 
> propose that this is actually the root of the problem. This is what 
> prevents us from clarifying requirements associated with the region 
role. 
> 
> Please consider the following. 
> 
> First, the description of region, which was not being fundamentally 
> disputed is: 
> "A large perceivable section of a web page or document, that is 
> important enough to be included in a page summary or table of 
> contents, for example, an area of the page containing live sporting 
> event statistics." 
> 
> Now, ask yourself, is a list, grid, tabpanel, alert, or status 
> element necessarily a large perceivable section of a web page or 
> document, that is important enough to be included in a page summary 
> or table of contents? 
> 
> I believe the answer is clearly "no!" 
> 
> I propose the following changes for ARIA 1.1 to resolve the issues 
> surrounding action 1440. 
> 
> 1. Change the super class of the following roles to be the abstract 
> role section: alert, grid, list, log, status, and tabpanel. 
> 
> 2. Remove region as a superclass of article, leaving article with 
> document as its only superclass. 
> 
> 3. Change the "Name from" characteristic of abstract role section tobe 
"N/A".
> 
> 4. Change the definition of landmark as follows. 
> Current definition: 
> A type of region on a page to which the user may want quick access. 
> Content in such a region is different from that of other regions on 
> the page and relevant to a specific user purpose, such as 
> navigating, searching, perusing the primary content, etc. 
> Proposed new definition: 
> A region of a page to which the user may want quick access. The 
> region has either a type (role) or label or both that conveys its 
> relevantce to a specific purpose, such as navigating, searching, 
> perusing the primary content, etc. 
> 
> 5. Keep the current landmark role as abstract. Even though we had 
> general agreement that making it concrete may be a good idea, after 
> reconsidering, I think it will create significant problems. Primary 
reasons: 
> A. a generic landmark role that does not require a label will reduce
> usability given that the landmark will have neither a clear purpose 
> nor a label. We agreed that if landmark were concrete, it could not 
> require label in order to be exposed as a landmark. 
> B. Making landmark concrete does not benefit current UA and AT 
> implementations that support authors use of labeled regions as 
> generic landmark containers and could create confusion since a 
> labeled region and an unlabeled generic landmark would need to 
> receive equal treatment by UA and AT. 
> C. Given the above proposed definition of landmark and changes to 
> the ontology, we could eliminate the abstract landmark role without 
> losing anything. However, I think this would just create unnecessary 
work. 
> 
> 6. In the HTML 5 mapping, map HTML section to region only if region 
> has a label. 
> 
> 7. In the core AAM, only expose role region in the platform 
> accessibility APIs if the region has a label. (Note, this is only 
> for role region and not any of its subclasses). 
> 
> 8. Specify accessible name as required for role region and 
> explicitly override that requirement (set it false) for each of the 
> concrete landmark subclass roles. 
> 
> 9. Consider adding the following text to the prose for role region 
> (not sure this is necessary): 
> "Assistive technologies and user agents MAY provide landmark 
> navigation functionality for elements with role region and an 
> accessible name." 
> 
> Taken together, I believe this set of changes will: 
> 1. eliminate all the confusion described in the notes associated 
> with action 1440. 
> 2. Enable legacy implementations to continue working. 
> 3. Continue to give AT vendors the flexibility they have today in UX 
design. 
> 
> 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