Re: WAI-ARIA Graphics Module

Hi Amelia,

Regarding "d-figure" or "figure" if it goes in the ARIA spec., I would
recommend requiring an aria-labelledby relationship (a required property)
to the text.

Let me address the group vs. region mapping.
Region was not used as it is used for navigational landmarks:
http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#landmark_roles
We don't see figure as being a landmark. Some back ground: Regions have
been used in practices as generic landmark regions provided they have a
label applied to it. These are typically large perceivable areas.

I am not sure if you looked at the ARIA 1.1 definition of "group" but it is
different from ARIA 1.0:

http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#group

Do you expect figures to show up in a page summary?

I agree there will be some challenges with timing the integration into the
main spec. but it is unavoidable. I do think we have runway to get some of
these into aria 1.1.

Rich

Rich Schwerdtfeger



From:	Amelia Bellamy-Royds <amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com>
To:	Richard Schwerdtfeger/Austin/IBM@IBMUS
Cc:	public-svg-a11y@w3.org
Date:	06/22/2015 10:23 AM
Subject:	Re: WAI-ARIA Graphics Module



Thanks for the feedback Rich.  See responses below.

On 22 June 2015 at 07:04, Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com> wrote:
  Hi Amelia,

  Thank you for all the great work. A few comments.

  1. If you want to change the definition of the "img" role because we have
  new roles called "symbol" then we are directing authors to do something
  for ARIA in HTML today. My recommendation would be that symbol be moved
  to the main ARIA core spec. to differentiate the two.

  http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#img



I'm fine with that if there is support for it in the main ARIA team.  I
think it really comes down to timing, and which spec will be ready when.

  2. The HTML Figure element is currently mapped to a "group" or panel role
  in platform accessibility APIs.
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/WD-html-aam-1.0-20150407/#el-figure

  Your definition of figure also refers to a caption. That is fine but
  there needs to be a distinct relationship between the caption an figure
  it is labelling.
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/WD-html-aam-1.0-20150407/#el-figcaption

  Because we are not introducing new elements that are known to be directly
  associated we need to be able to associate a label with the figure. We
  could define a figcaption role that requires that labels  a figure. If we
  want to do this we should also consider putting it in the core ARIA spec.




I was assuming that aria-labelledby would cover the figure/caption
association, without needing a special role.  The HTML guidelines treat
<figcaption> as an element with native semantics for defining the label of
the figure.  The same for a table caption.  In that way, it is similar to
SVG <title> and <desc>, except that a <figcaption> is visible text.

Regarding the existing default "group" mapping, I think that is the same
problem we had with the SVG default mappings -- mis-using "group" because
there was nothing else suitable.  I don't know why "region" wasn't used; I
would assume that it is closer to the "panel" role in OS APIs.

Maybe you could ask around, and if there was a clear reasoning behind *not*
using "region" for figures, we could change the parent class and suggested
fallback for "figure".


  3. Graphicaldoc would appear to be a superclass of chart, map, etc. and
  not a subclass. I see that graphical characteristics are missing from
  graphicaldoc. This should subclass either the "region" or the "group:
  roles.



That's what I meant: charts and maps are sub-classes of graphicaldoc.  If I
wrote the reverse, it was an error.  I'm up to suggestions for the parent
role; I had it extending the basic document class, but region also works.

  4.  Regarding dropping the g- that will be a non-starter unless it goes
  into the ARIA spec. It is possible that other taxonomies could run into
  naming conflicts so we have an ARIA Extension model:
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/wiki/ARIAExtensions

  We already had this discussion with the ARIA digital publishing effort
  and this was the extension strategy that we all reached consensus on.
  Let's take figure for example. A figure could mean something entire
  different in the fashion world. We have to ensure we do not have name
  conflicts. So, if you would like a different vocabulary preamble, say
  graphics-, that makes more sense then I would be open to that but we need
  to avoid name collisions.


That makes sense; thanks for the link.  However, it makes it more difficult
to work on these roles separately but plan to eventually them into the main
ARIA spec (for ARIA 2 or a future edition).  I suspect the figure,
iconbutton, and symbol roles,  would all be of broader use.  Just speaking
as an author, I would find it rather arbitrary and difficult to remember
which roles have a g- in front and which don't.

We could put the prefix back in for now, get everything cleaned up for a
working draft, and then reach out to the rest of the ARIA team to see if
they have any interest in "poaching" our definitions and pulling them into
the main spec, minus the namespace prefix.

Best,
Amelia