UAIG and ARIA 1.1 spec issues regarding Combobox?

Hi,
There are a few things that I wished to ask about regarding the accessibility tree mappings and usage of role=combobox, that appear to be unclear.

Firstly, within the accessibility tree mappings, it appears that the only property values for a Combobox are Name and Description, but there is no way of setting Value.

If you are using a native input element, you get the Value property for free, but if you create a simulated combobox using a span or div element, you cannot set a Value property value for the Combobox.

You can see this by comparing this first editable combobox at
http://whatsock.com/tsg/Coding%20Arena/ARIA%20Comboboxes/ARIA%20Comboboxes%20(Native%20Inputs,%20Editable%20with%20Substring%20Match)/demo.htm

With this second simulated Combobox using a span element at
http://whatsock.com/tsg/Coding%20Arena/ARIA%20Comboboxes/ARIA%20Comboboxes%20(Simulated,%20Readonly)/demo.htm

Examining the accessibility tree in IE and FF, you can see the Value property is set for the first, but not for the second.

The closest association provided by the spec is to use aria-activedescendant as the Value of the Combobox. However this breaks when the associated Listbox is removed from the DOM as part of a fully dynamic widget, then aria-activedescendant is null or left pointing at nothing.

The second issue with the Combobox role, is where it states that aria-haspopup is implicitly set to "true" on all Combobox roles.

I understand why, since the dropdown effect is what this refers to by connecting the attached Listbox.

However, what would happen if I also had a right click ARIA Menu attached to the edit field of a Combobox?

Since setting aria-haspopup="true" would be pointless (since this is implicitly "true" already), how would this be conveyed to the AT user?

Thanks,
Bryan

Received on Wednesday, 1 July 2015 03:36:12 UTC