RE: Asking all to consider making aria-autocomplete Boolean

Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
> However, I don't have an opinion about deprecating the current
aria-autocomplete values, 
> mainly because I don't have a feel for if users find them useful or not.  

Thus far, It has not been possible to find them useful because there are no
implementations that make use of the differentiating nuances in meaning of
the various values.

> A sighted user can see whether the completion is inline or not, whether
the list is filtered or not, or both, or neither.  
> Is that important to relay to AT users?  

I do not think so. It's way too complicated to understand. There are more
than just these 4 variations in behavior, and even getting a firm
understanding of these 4 seems to be beyond most people's comprehension. I
might be extraordinarily dense on this particular topic, but I still do not
comprehend all the behaviors.

For example, I have no idea what inline means for a combobox. What would the
source of the inline completion be if the suggested value was not a list
member? It would be really odd to show an inline suggestion that was not a
member of the list.

> I would need some form of user studies to be convinced either way, but I
don't see that happening in the ARIA 1.1 time frame.

At least when it comes to screen reader and screen magnifier users, I do not
think this topic merits a study. I believe the tokenized approach is simply
too complex for authors, AT developers, and consumers.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Scheuhammer [mailto:clown@alum.mit.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, February 4, 2016 8:19 AM
To: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com>; ARIA Working Group
<public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Asking all to consider making aria-autocomplete Boolean

On 2016-02-03 9:26 PM, Matt King wrote:
> 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.

A value of list also indicates that the options in the list are the only
ones that match what the user has typed thus far.  That is, the more the
user types, the fewer the options.  If aria-autocomplete is not set to
"list", then the list will show all possible options and not only matches.

However, I don't have an opinion about deprecating the current
aria-autocomplete values, mainly because I don't have a feel for if users
find them useful or not.  A sighted user can see whether the completion is
inline or not, whether the list is filtered or not, or both, or neither.  Is
that important to relay to AT users?  I would need some form of user studies
to be convinced either way, but I don't see that happening in the ARIA 1.1
time frame.

--
;;;;joseph.

'Die Wahrheit ist Irgendwo da Draußen. Wieder.'
                  - C. Carter -

Received on Thursday, 4 February 2016 17:29:53 UTC