RE: ACTION-1442 Draft spec text for aria-current

I'm not sure that confining this functionality to a navigation container is a good idea, because it has valid use cases outside of this.

For example, as I think James Craig mentioned in the past, you could use this on a date picker to indicate the current date.

There are also others, such as indicating the current image as part of an authentication process, and so on. I think this should be flexible in order to be applicable to variable control types.


From: Léonie Watson [mailto:LWatson@PacielloGroup.com]
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2014 12:38 AM
To: W3C WAI Protocols & Formats
Subject: ACTION-1442 Draft spec text for aria-current

This is a modified version of Brian's original draft text for aria-current [1]:


Indicates the current element within a navigation container.

The aria-current attribute indicates whether the element is current (true), or not current (false). If the aria-current attribute is false, the current state of the element should not be conveyed by User Agents.

For example, aria-current may be used to indicate the current step in a process, or the current document within a collection.

Note
The aria-current attribute is similar to the aria-selected attribute, but there are important differences. the aria-selected attribute indicates the selected state of children within certain widgets, whilst the aria-current attribute indicates the current element within the scope of a navigation container.

Characteristics of aria-current
Used in roles: ?
Value: true/false/undefined

Values of aria-current
true: The element is current
false: The element is not current
undefined: The element cannot be current


The original draft text allowed aria-current to be used on all elements of the base markup. I'm not sure this is the right approach, but equally I'm not sure how best to constrain it in the spec text. I also feel that "navigation container" is too vague a term to be practically useful.

Thoughts on this, and the draft text as it stands, very welcome.

Léonie.

[1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/Group/track/actions/1442


--
Léonie Watson - Senior Accessibility Engineer, TPG
@LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup