Re: aria-flowto changes user-agent behavior, which isn't the intended purpose of ARIA

Let's say I ask my screen reader to read the page from top to bottom, but 
there is a sidebar (magazine style).

How do I use tabindex or nextfocus to indicate to the AT when to break off 
to the sidebar so that it's read at a relevant moment?

- Aaron



From:
James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>
To:
Aaron M Leventhal/Cambridge/IBM@IBMUS
Cc:
WAI XTech <wai-xtech@w3.org>, wai-xtech-request@w3.org
Date:
12/08/2008 09:56 AM
Subject:
Re: aria-flowto changes user-agent behavior, which isn't the intended 
purpose of ARIA



But that could result in a different tab order and behavior when assistive 
technology is running than when it is not, or a different behavior between 
different types of AT with varying levels of support for aria-flowto, and 
it could potentially conflict with a host language feature (like nextfocus 
in XHTML 2). I'm still not sure this is a good idea.


On Dec 8, 2008, at 12:23 AM, Aaron M Leventhal wrote:

I agree that this is wrong because it goes against the purpose of ARIA, 
but I think it's just incorrectly worded. The text in the spec should say 
something like "aria-flowto recommends a document reading to assistive 
technologies". 

- Aaron 


From: 
James Craig <jcraig@apple.com> 
To: 
WAI XTech <wai-xtech@w3.org> 
Date: 
12/08/2008 08:59 AM 
Subject: 
aria-flowto changes user-agent behavior, which isn't the intended purpose 
of ARIA




aria-flowto changes user agent behavior, which isn't the intended purpose 
of ARIA. 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/#aria-flowto 

If ARIA really needs this, we should move it to section 6.2.3 and make it 
a requirement of implementing host languages. 
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/#host_general_focus