RE: Objection to password role

From: Michiel Bijl [mailto:michiel@agosto.nl]
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 6:44 AM

To clarify, this is not a formal objection, I’m not in any postion to do that. I do want to raise awareness for all the unanswered question regarding the password role.


I wouldn’t object to postponing further discussion of the password role to the next version of ARIA, and omitting it from ARIA 1.1.

Some developers (from Google, as I recall) have stated that one of the objectives of Web Components is to be able to implement equivalent functionality to all of the HTML elements. If this is indeed the goal, then the next version of ARIA, or an accessibility API available to JavaScript applications, will need to support the creation of specialized password widgets. That is, <input type=password> cannot be the only means of obtaining proper behavior from assistive technologies if the underlying objective is to be able to represent all of the capabilities of HTML, in addition to whatever other capabilities are considered necessary for further development of an accessible Web platform.

Thus I think there’s a good argument in principle for a password role, quite independently of practical arguments based on immediate needs. (Other people can speak to those; I don’t deal with custom password widgets.)

If those who are raising concerns have concrete design changes to suggest that would address their issues, then these should be considered, perhaps for the next version of ARIA. However, I’m not supportive of the argument that this functionality should simply not be supported in ARIA. If people are creating custom password widgets, then surely they need to be made accessible, and currently there is no means besides an input element of informing a screen reader that it shouldn’t, for example, echo the characters typed into a password field.


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