Re: [REVIEW REQUESTED] Rewrite of the text role

I’m also not certain about the name and prefer the original “text” as it describes what the role does. If the role maps to “StaticText” then renaming “static” to “statictext” would, I believe, make it easier for authors to find and understand.

—
Francis Storr
francis.storr@intel.com
Lead Designer, Software Accessibility Program
Information Technology Chair for the Intel Diverse Abilities Network.


From: Amelia Bellamy-Royds <amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 at 12:14
To: Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs@igalia.com>
Cc: ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: Re: [REVIEW REQUESTED] Rewrite of the text role
Resent-From: <public-aria@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 at 12:15

+1 to the description and examples. Very clear about the purpose, impact, and restrictions on the role.

I'm less certain about the name change.  "static" sounds to me like a disabled widget.  I worry that many authors won't understand it or think to use it for font icons, images, and SVG paths that directly represent text.

It's more verbose, but is statictext or plaintext an option?

~Amelia

On 28 June 2016 at 12:38, Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs@igalia.com<mailto:jdiggs@igalia.com>> wrote:
Hi all.

tl;dr: Please read
https://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/action-2086/aria/aria.html#static

How that draft came to be is detailed below.

In response to the concerns raised by Apple regarding the removal of the
text role, and their request that we restore it for 1.1, I sent an
extremely long (5 pages in print) and very ATK-specific email to James
in which I went through all of the text role examples, and added some
variants of my own, in order to figure out just what was expected for my
platform. Because, like I said to James, if I have no clue how to
*properly* implement support for this role on my own platform, we have a
problem.

This was very late on Friday evening. Throughout the weekend, James and
I emailed back and forth, with the emails getting even longer and even
more in-the-weedsy, until finally we realized what the problem was. The
problem was that my understanding of the text role was completely and
utterly different from what this role is meant to be. For the purposes
of documentation, and perhaps help others reach the "AHA!" moment I did,
here is the relevant bit I sent to James in which I finally "got it.":

[clip]