Re: Proposal: remove aria-describedat from the ARIA 1.1 specification

On Thu, 5 Nov 2015, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:

> 
> You could link it via aria-describedby to whatever you are describing.  This way you have an explicit extended description.

But aria-describedby is for non-extended descriptions, standard
descriptions that can't be associated with standard controls. Admittedly
the formal description of the element is ambiguous, in that it
explicitly clarifies that a description is more verbose than a label,
but currently all AT (I believe) treats aria-describedby as a
non-extended description which should be placed in the normal flow and
not reported as special. Is the proposal that aria-describedby should
always mean extended descriptions, and anything which is less verbose
than an extended description belongs in a label? If that's the case, the
formal definition of aria-describedby will need to be clarified, and
screenreader manufacturers will need to be asked to change the behavior
accordingly (e.g. to treat aria-describedby like longdesc, not like
aria-labelledby).

Deborah Kaplan
> 
> Rich Schwerdtfeger
> 
> Inactive hide details for Deborah Kaplan ---11/05/2015 10:07:45 AM---On Thu, 5 Nov 2015, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote: > but I b Deborah
> Kaplan ---11/05/2015 10:07:45 AM---On Thu, 5 Nov 2015, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote: > but I believe this addresses the requirements of
> 
> From: Deborah Kaplan <dkaplan@safaribooksonline.com>
> To: Richard Schwerdtfeger/Austin/IBM@IBMUS
> Cc: WAI Protocols & Formats <public-pfwg@w3.org>, DPUB-ARIA <public-dpub-aria@w3.org>
> Date: 11/05/2015 10:07 AM
> Subject: Re: Proposal: remove aria-describedat from the ARIA 1.1  specification
> 
> _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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> On Thu, 5 Nov 2015, Richard Schwerdtfeger wrote:
> 
> > but I believe this addresses the requirements of
> > the digital publishing industry.
> 
> One of our biggest concerns was that this extended description be
> something that could be semantically identified AS an extended
> description. Was this addressed in discussions at TPAC? Based on the
> email that has gone by, I have not seen anything that will distinguish
> extended descriptions in <details> elements from anything else in a
> <details> element.
> 
> Deborah Kaplan
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