Comments - Re: wai-aria FAQ page [rough draft]

My experience with FAQ's has been that they're short quick paragraph answers to my questions.  They'll usually end up pointing me to somewhere else if I really want deep indepth information.

*2. What is ARIA and how does it allow for accessible JavaScript widgets?*
Could you assume that if someone's at the FAQ that they've already been to the overview page?  The FAQ are popular specific questions that the overview doesn't answer.  Seems like this is trying to rehash all of WAI ARIA.  Maybe just give a general answer and point folks back to the overview and best practices doc??

*3. What is the use case for ARIA?*
In this question and in other places, it uses the term widgets to mean the little navigational items.  Widgets have so many meanings that'd id be concerns about people getting confused.

This is the kind of widget I think of when I first think of widgets...
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ 
http://widgets.yahoo.com/ 

The last paragraph says "developing compelling Web 2.0 applications."  Shouldn't this be "developing compelling rich internet applications" to keep the nomenclature consistent?

*4. Is ARIA available now?*
Could this be mixed with 9 somehow?  Could we rename this question to "Can I start using WAI ARIA now?"


******************
Justin Thorp
US Library of Congress
Web Services - Office of Strategic Initiatives
e - juth@loc.gov
p - 202/707-9541

>>> Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org> 10/30/2007 8:04 PM >>>

> Here is a first pass at the FAQ adaptation from the Mozilla original.

Thanks Sharron! I put it online at 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/ARIA/faq.html 

A few thoughts from quick skim:
* Could you add a first question that points to the WAI-ARIA Overview. (e.g., perhaps like the first paragraph of the first WCAG 2 FAQ question points to its overview: http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/wcag2faq#docs)
* Make it more generic and not just related to HTML 5; e.g., delete the first question "FAQ: ARIA in HTML"
* "What is ARIA and how does it allow for accessible JavaScript widgets?" seems pretty complex for a first FAQ. What about putting others first &/or breaking this up?
* Please take the list out of "9. Who supports ARIA?" -- I'm concerned that it's too close to the line of vendor-neutrality and also maintaining it. How about putting a general statement about some doing it, and then pointing to the Mozilla page for details?
* For "4. Is ARIA available now?" we need to clarify the status within the W3C Recommendation Track Process! This is a good place to point to http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/w3c-process (and also perhaps copy some wording from the WCAG 2 FAQ). This is also related to "What's the state of ARIA standardization?". Perhaps this should be merged and/or moved higher?

All for now...

~Shawn

Received on Thursday, 1 November 2007 15:22:25 UTC