Re: GWT accordion example

Jon wrote:
> These seem to me little more than buttons the expose and hide content.  I do not think they are a special control.
I think a wizard or a pager, at least, are more than just buttons to 
expose and hide content.  The essential feature of wizards is that the 
content is presented in a sequence.  The UI is a way to guide a user 
through the content.  Which content is revealed depends on past choices, 
and the path through the sequence is not necessarily straight forward.

In contrast, tab lists and accordions are random access interfaces in 
that there is no restriction that the content be revealed in any 
sequence.  Users can interact sequentially with a tab panel, but they 
are not required to.*

That all four potentially use the same or very similar keystrokes is 
somewhat remarkable.

That being said, if there is no benefit to, say, screen reader users in 
exposing these components as anything more than buttons for showing and 
hiding content, then, well, okay.  The point behind giving more specific 
roles and states is that they describe the HTML to the user in a way 
that helps them understand what they can do.

The question is:  is describing the situation as buttons sufficient?  I 
presume the buttons would include an aria-controls property to indicate 
what content is shown/hidden by them.  What else would be needed?  What 
is the role of the content itself?  Does it need one?  Note that if it 
were described as a tablist, and the content as a tabpanel (with their 
properties/states), the user gets the relationships "for free".  And the 
keystrokes.e

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* The fact that wizards and pagers define an ordering implies that there 
needs to be more than just classifying them with role="tablist".  There 
needs to be a property than indicates the order vs. random-access 
aspect.  Is it aria-flowto 
(http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/#aria-flowto)?  That is, the presence of 
aria-flowto indicates this is a tablist that is sequenced (wizard, 
pager); whereas its absence indicates lack of order.

-- 
;;;;joseph

'This is not war -- this is pest control!'
      - "Doomsday", Dalek Leader -

Received on Thursday, 30 October 2008 18:41:25 UTC