Tab role and required accessible name: WAI-ARIA 1.1 spec

Greetings everyone.

While looking at the tab role entry in both ARIA 1.0 and 1.1
specifications (I believe this is the latest 1.1 draft:
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#tab
)
I notice that accessible name is not required for a tab.
I find this a little confusing.
If I am a user, of assistive technology (or just a user in general), I
need the accessible name in order to decide whether I want to activate
the tab and reveal its associated tabpanel content, don't I?
Isn't accessible name as important for a tab as it would be for a link
or for a button?
If an author used CSS background icons to visually label the tabs it
seems ok if these do not have an accessible text alternative.
I might be missing something here, and I can always do with a little
bit of enlightenment.
Hope everyone had an "eggcelent" Easter.
-Birkir
P.s. For the final draft, we need to make the role entries h2
headings, not h5, I find navigating the 1.1 spec very cumbersome due
to the skewed heading levels, but it is all about content right now,
not presentation.

Received on Monday, 6 April 2015 07:31:41 UTC