In response to the feedback & testing results, I'm going to ask the rest of
the SVG team to revert the previous decision & to add in explicit language
neutering nested <a> elements (so that content still displays but the href
is ignored; the nested content would not be its own link).
SVG issue for that: https://github.com/w3c/svgwg/issues/178
Given that it is still possible to create a nested link structure in HTML
via JavaScript, I think some follow-up needs to happen on the HTML side to
create similar behavior. Does anyone want to spearhead that, or should I
file issues myself?
*Longer term discussion for ARIA:*
De-facto nested links are actually quite common these days, at least from
the perspective of mouse/tap users. E.g., on the Twitter web site, an
entire tweet-block acts like a link to the tweet's permalink page, but
spans of text within it are still links to other content. The outer "link"
is constructed through JS click event handlers, rather than actual nested
<a> elements. Nonetheless, the logical structure, and the way it is
perceived by end users is that there is one large linked object which
contains specific links nested inside it. However, screen reader users
aren't receiving this structure because it cannot be exposed effectively in
the ARIA / Accessibility API models.
This is therefore another piece of evidence that ARIA 2 will need a deep
discussion on how to support nested interactive content. The "one element,
one role" model, based on the limited number of widgets in desktop APIs of
the 1990s, just isn't enough for modern web of rich custom widgets,
including composite nested and multi-functional widgets, and including
interactive components that also represent document structure such as
headings and list items.
~Amelia
On 24 June 2016 at 22:07, Birkir Gunnarsson <birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com>
wrote:
> This does not work as an html construct (it is invalid after all).
> There would have to be extremely urgent and very convincing reasons
> why it should be allowed in SVG.
>
> On 6/24/16, White, Jason J <jjwhite@ets.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On Jun 24, 2016, at 03:14, Schnabel, Stefan <stefan.schnabel@sap.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> Testing of http://mcc.id.au/temp/nested-links.html
> >> The entire construct is treated as a single link in VoiceOver/Safari
> >> under OS X, both when navigating with the tab key and when using
> VoiceOver
> >> commands for navigation.
> >
>