Re: What is the current situation with ARIA and accordion?

On 2 Sep 2008, at 7:19 PM, Victor Tsaran wrote:

> Hello all,
> I know that in early stages of ARIA there was a proposal for  
> accordion. Earl Johnson from Sun has written a "complete proposal"  
> for accordion http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide#accordion as  
> part of the DHTML Style Guide,. However, there are no ARIA roles  
> and states that describe the actual widget in all its incarnations,  
> e.g. single panels, multiple expanded panels etc. I understand that  
> one of the suggestions is to use appropriate roles and states for  
> the job, e.g. menus, tab panels, treeviews etc. However, this may  
> not always be a desirable option, particularly for distributable  
> components.
> What is the plan for accordions going forward?
> Should we contribute our own findings and/or proposal for this widget?

There are serious problems with adding a special role for the  
accordion widget.
The accessibility APIs and assistive technologies don't know this  
role at present.

.. but we're (PFWG) weakening, and have decided to give it a second  
look.

Can we have references to some live examples from the web?

Worked examples illustrating a proposed design pattern for the best  
practices
would be the ultimate; but for now just some examples that work with  
eyes
and keyboard showing multi-selectability and some or all of Earl's  
keystroke
functions.

Al



> Thanks,
> Victor
>