Significant ambiguities in aria-roledescription

We have 2 significant ambiguities of which I am now aware in
aria-roledescription even with the additional normative statements I added
in option 3 of the below proposal.

 

Ambiguity #1: role none with a role description:

<img role="none" aria-roledescription="Gotch ya">

<table role="none" aria-roledescription="layout table">

 

What would end up in the AX tree? What should a screen reader say?

 

Ambiguity 2:  role description on an element whose role is normally
suppressed by screen readers:

<ul>

<li aria-roledescription="fruit">Apple</li>

<li aria-roledescription="fruit">Banana</li>

<li aria-roledescription="fruit">Orange </li>

</ul>

 

Should screen readers be expected to announce each list item as a fruit? Or,
should the screen reader be able to use normal processing for the listitem
role and not speak the role description?

 

It would be a pretty significant issue for authors if every screen reader
came up with their own idea about what to do.

 

Matt

 

From: Matt King [mailto:a11yThinker@Gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 5, 2016 2:28 PM
To: ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: RE: ACTION-2092 - Proposal ready for review - Create a proposal for
handling the role description value of ""

 

I vote for option 3 in the below proposal. If option 3 is not acceptable to
the group, I vote for option 1.

 

While allowing ARIA to wipe out screen reader announcement of an element's
role with an empty roledescription makes ARIA more flexible, I think it is
unnecessary flexibility that increases the risk of negative side effects and
makes debugging problems more complex for authors. As a screen reader user,
I already find roledescription scary enough without this added complexity.

 

Matt King

 

From: Matt King [mailto:a11yThinker@Gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 5, 2016 1:53 PM
To: ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org <mailto:public-aria@w3.org> >
Subject: ACTION-2092 - Proposal ready for review - Create a proposal for
handling the role description value of ""

 

Proposals to specify how null or empty aria-roledescription values will be
handled by user agents and assistive technologies are ready for review.

 

Following are the proposals. As I explain below, I think this exposes other
ambiguities in aria-roledescription that should be plugged.

 

In branch action2092option1[1], added the following sentence.

"If the value of aria-roledescription is empty or contains only white space
characters, user agents MUST treat the element as if the
aria-roledescription property were not specified."

 

In branch action2092option2[2], added the following 2 sentences.

"If the value of aria-roledescription is empty or contains only white space
characters, user agents SHOULD expose the value in a manner consistent with
how null values are expressed in their platform accessibility API. If the
value is empty or null, assistive technologies MAY render the element as if
it does not have a role name."

 

In the process of making the above branches, I noticed that there is still
significant ambiguity regarding what an assistive technology should do with
the roledescription. The actual intent of the property is not clear. For
example, if you provide a roledescription for a region, should the assistive
technology still treat the element as a region? This ambiguity also has
significant impact on the meaning of the note that tells authors how to
limit the use of roledescription.

 

The issue of how authors, user agents, and assistive technologies may treat
null or empty values increases the need to remove these ambiguities. So, I
have also proposed an option 3, which equivalent to option 1 but also
addresses these issues. I did not make a similar equivalence to option 2
because it is much less clear what the normative authoring and assistive
technology guidance should be in that case.

 

In branch action2092option3[3]:

1. Stated that user agents MUST NOT expose aria-roledescription if it is
empty or whitespace (same as option 1)

2. Changed the note that contained an implied normative author SHOULD
limiting use of the roledescription into a normative author SHOULD.

3. Added a normative assistive technology SHOULD statement explaining that
roledescription should change only how the name of the role of an element is
expressed and should not change which assistive technology functions are
provided for an element.

4. (editorial) Used a list format to express the authoring and user agent
requirements.

 

[1] action2092option1 branch:

http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/action2092option1/aria/aria.html

 

[2] action2092option2 branch:

http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/action2092option2/aria/aria.html

 

[3] action2092option3 branch:

http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/action2092option3/aria/aria.html

 

Matt King