Does the APA WG look at CSS accessibility issues? If so, css-highlight-api is a good one to look at

Hi everyone, 

During TPAC I attended a session on CSS accessibility topics to gather 
information about current challenges where one of the issues struck a 
chord with me.

Has the APA WG been looking at CSS accessibility and is the group aware of 
the conversation on the CSS highlight API? See Issue 6498 on how the CSS 
highlight API is exposed to the accessibility tree (
https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/6498). I'm concerned that 
they're only thinking about attaching color names to highlights or limited 
meanings (find or spelling and grammar only), where there is the 
opportunity to associate any meaningful name or label which the author 
could define. 

An example: In data analysis, highlights are used to indicate any number 
of things - errors, outliers, or like the example in my comment in the 
issue: user sentiments. Highlights are also used in data analysis for 
medical literature to highligh medical conditions or symptom keywords.

I added a comment to that effect, but from rest of the conversation they 
are assuming that "accessibility tools" as they call them are way more 
sophisticated than they are. That using an accessibility tool like a 
screen reader you can assign other text to the color name. I don't quite 
know how that could be done, as screen readers simply parse and speak what 
they discover in the DOM.

I have to admit, I am a little out of my technology expertise with CSS. I 
don't know how much CSS information is transposed into the DOM for a 
screen reader to access but it seems that if it is possible, it is a good 
opportunity to make a wide range of author-defined highlights accessible 
to screen reader users.

Do you know if there are accessibility experts in APA that have more CSS 
knowledge who can chime in on the conversation?

Best regards,

Mary Jo
_____________________________________________
Mary Jo Mueller
Accessibility Standards Program Manager
IBM Accessibility



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