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

On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>wrote:

> hi Ian,
>
> you wrote:
>
> 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. So maybe it should not be replaced even if AT
>> are all working well with ARIA landmark roles
>
>
> The W3C HTML specification of main [1] contains the following note:
>
> Note: User agents that support keyboard navigation of content are strongly
>> encouraged to provide a method to navigate to the main element and once
>> navigated to, ensure the next element in the focus order is the first
>> focusable element within the main element. This will provide a simple
>> method for keyboard users to bypass blocks of content such as navigation
>> links.
>>
>
> Myself and others are working with browser vendors to get this
> implemented. Of course it is not advised to abandon skip links until this
> is broadly implemented
>
> [1]
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/grouping-content.html#the-main-element
>
>
>
> with regards
>
> --
> SteveF
> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
>


That note is an important reminder. I used to forgot to make browsers
focusing on an element after users clicking on a "skip link" to skip to it,
and that basically makes the "skip to" function meaningless.

Thanks for the effort in pushing accessible web forward.



On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 9:49 PM, Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>wrote:

> 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/>
>


Yeah, I have heard people stated that the use of "process of elimination"
needs a prerequisite -- document author codes everything else correctly,
thus the method is sometimes unreliable and is only applied to experienced
people.


Kind Regards,
Ian Yang