Re: Rethinking the necessities of ARIA landmark role "main" and HTML5 <main> element

hi Ian,


Apparently, people who disagreed with the introductions of "main" role and
> <main> element are purely out of structural reason. They thought by using
> "process of elimination" is enough to tell the main content, so in the html
> structure there doesn't need to be a <main> element or an element being
> given the "main" role


nice in theory, but in practcie it has been shown that provision of an
element that identifies main content is a common pattern and is simpler and
more robust for the purpose than relying upon everything else been marked
up correctly

with regards

--
SteveF
HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
<http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html>


On 24 March 2013 13:41, Ian Yang <ian@invigoreight.com> wrote:

> Thanks for Patrick H. Lauke and Charles McCathie Nevile's advises, which
> clearly explained an explicit element dedicated for the main content is a
> consistent and better way over using "skip to" links, which are currently
> being implemented inconsistently and buggy across websites.
>
> Apparently, people who disagreed with the introductions of "main" role and
> <main> element are purely out of structural reason. They thought by using
> "process of elimination" is enough to tell the main content, so in the html
> structure there doesn't need to be a <main> element or an element being
> given the "main" role; while people who agreed with the introductions of
> these two features are out of accessibility reason.
>
> Perhaps basing on different reasons is why people could not reach an
> agreement.
>
>
> Kind Regards,
> Ian Yang
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 9:09 PM, Charles McCathie Nevile <
> chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 24 Mar 2013 04:24:45 +0100, Ian Yang <ian@invigoreight.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 8:33 AM, Charles McCathie Nevile <
>>> chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>>>
>>>  A major reason for the element is to replace the "skip to main content"
>>>> links that are all over the web, for accessibility purposes. While the
>>>> use
>>>> of those links is a terrible bit of architecture (they only work if you
>>>> start from the top of the page and navigate with the keyboard, etc etc)
>>>> they are deemed useful enough to include on all kinds of websites whose
>>>> designs have been through multiple rounds of usability testing to ensure
>>>> they make sense in practice.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Hi Charles,
>>>
>>> Thanks for your opinion.
>>>
>>> About the "skip to main content" link, I have heard suggestions said that
>>> it's also useful for some other users (laptop users, etc) who can only
>>> navigate by using keyboard.
>>>
>>
>> Of course it is. It is still not a good solution, compared to an element
>> that allows the browser to provide a superior native functionality to all
>> users, or "assistive technology" which might well just be a browser
>> extension.
>>
>>
>>  So maybe it should not be replaced even if AT are all working well with
>>> ARIA landmark roles.
>>>
>>
>> While screenreader users are more or less all keyboard users, many
>> keyboard users aren't screenreader users. "main" doesn't only apply to
>> screenreaders. Replacing "skip to content" links would be great. A
>> consistent way to get from anywhere in any
>> page to the main content is far better than working out all the little
>> differences in presentation, tab order, and so on when every website does
>> the whole thing itself, even if they do it without bugs. Many "skip to
>> content" links are implemented with bugs (mostly caused by hiding the link
>> in the visual presentation).
>>
>> Useful background would be to understand the discussions around
>> accesskeys and the rel attribute from about 10 years ago. Look for John
>> Foliot and Jukka Korpela explaining the problem. I proposed solutions which
>> revolved around improving the implementations. Opera and iCab have
>> implementations that are not bad, but the rest of the browsers range from
>> bad to terrible unfortunately. The HTML5 spec offers a significant
>> improvement on the HTML 4 spec, but I think there is more work to actually
>> do this properly.
>>
>> The reason it is useful to understand is that accesskey is a general
>> solution for keyboard access, where "main" provides a solution for one
>> specific issue. The general solution happily incorporates and should defer
>> to the specific solution.
>>
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Chaals
>>
>> --
>> Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
>>         chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com
>>
>
>