Re: Asking all to consider making aria-autocomplete Boolean

One possibility is just to deprecate “list”and “both” in ARIA 1.1, and define “none” to be the same as Matt’s proposed “false" and “inline” the same as Matt’s proposed “true”.

Jon


From: Rich Schwerdtfeger <richschwer@gmail.com<mailto:richschwer@gmail.com>>
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 at 11:16 PM
To: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com<mailto:a11ythinker@gmail.com>>
Cc: ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org<mailto:public-aria@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Asking all to consider making aria-autocomplete Boolean
Resent-From: <public-aria@w3.org<mailto:public-aria@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 at 11:17 PM

Yes. If there are current implementations out there with those values it breaks them.

We are trying to shut 1.1 down Matt. This is not what you do when you are trying to shut it down.

We also don't have time to canvas the wild now to see what this breaks.

Rich

Rich

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 3, 2016, at 8:26 PM, Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com<mailto:a11ythinker@gmail.com>> wrote:

As I am digging into action 1490:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/track/actions/1490<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.w3.org_WAI_ARIA_track_actions_1490&d=BQMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=REZD8fc2AwufInstfW3L5jSLVS8bjZtAodDOhat7yAI&m=_b6bpPtzYBAPmEJ9Z7L7o1eNZ3B_2BDo6PLkPaFo3H0&s=FAEFyxQClqsAyw7njfGNs-V857wW9PdAACJbS0YQBLw&e=>
I am attempting to clarify the meaning of states and properties that apply to combobox.

I have been discussing the meaning of autocomplete with a variety of people, and the only thing that is clear to me is that everyone seems to have a different understanding of when each of the different values should be used. Ironically, in some initial sniff testing, the value of aria-autocomplete does not seem to matter much when it comes to screen reader behavior.

I am coming to the conclusion that aria-autocomplete is overloaded with too many meanings and that simplifying would better serve both assistive technology developers and web authors.

My proposal: make aria-autocomplete a Boolean. True means that a textbox has autocomplete behaviors, i.e., suggested completion will appear after the caret as a user types.

I propose that for combobox, we do not need any of the following values for aria-autocomplete:
1. none because that would be the same as false.
2. inline because that would be the same as true.
3. list because all comboboxes have a list, and that list is  identified by a relationship and known to be visible when expanded is true.
4. Both because that is the same as true combined with the list.

If aria-autocomplete is a Boolean, then we could also have a 1:1 mapping with html autocomplete. Thus, in HTML, if an author specifies autocomplete, that would imply that aria-autocomplete is true. The difference between aria-autocomplete and html autocomplete would then be that html autocomplete effects browser behavior whereas aria-autocomplete can be used when the author wishes to provide the autocomplete behavior.

Can anyone think of a good reason for keeping the current enumeration rather than moving to a simple Boolean with a clear definition?

Matt King