Re: Ensuring "undefined" means undefined for aria-current

Hey Matt.

I am in favor of aria-expanded being a supported property on menu items.
However, I'm not convinced that's a non-normative change without the
potential for unintended consequences. For instance, on my platform,
native menu items are not expandable. Native menus.

In contrast, I personally feel that the proposed change related to
aria-current is stating what is essentially a tautology -- or should be:
An "undefined" value is an undefined value.

--joanie

On 07/24/2017 07:38 PM, Matt King wrote:
> Agree with the change.
> 
> Who can make the call as to what is editorial? I agree this is an oversight and that implementing the spec as written today is not very developer friendly. But, if you read the text literally, which is normally the way we read specs, this is a change that impacts implementation. 
> 
> Perhaps the spec should stay as is and browsers should go ahead and implement aria-current the way we think it should have been written regardless of what the spec says.
> 
> This is what has been done for aria-expanded on menuitems. Browsers have implemented support for it, and it works, but validators choke on it because the spec says it is not allowed.
> 
> In other words, if this change to aria-current is editorial, then the change to allow aria-expanded on menuitems is editorial as well as it is a similar kind of oversight/error.
> 
> Matt
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joanmarie Diggs [mailto:jdiggs@igalia.com] 
> Sent: Monday, July 24, 2017 9:20 AM
> To: ARIA Working Group <public-aria@w3.org>
> Subject: Ensuring "undefined" means undefined for aria-current
> 
> Hey all.
> 
> As I pointed out on the list [1], if aria-current is undefined because no value is specified, aria-current is false. But if aria-current is set to the value "undefined", aria-current is true. It was never (ever,
> ever) intended for undefined and "undefined" to be opposite values. And normally they aren't. We just have an oddball case with aria-current because the spec states the following for aria-current:
> 
> "Any value not included in the list of allowed values should be treated by assistive technologies as if the value true had been provided."
> 
> It is my proposal that we fix this oversight by making the following change:
> 
> Existing text: "If the attribute is not present or its value is an empty string, the default value of false applies and the aria-current state MUST NOT be exposed by user agents or assistive technologies."
> 
> Proposed text: "If the attribute is not present or its value is an empty string or <code>undefined</code>, the default value of false applies and the aria-current state MUST NOT be exposed by user agents or assistive technologies."
> 
> I believe the above changes are editorial because surely no one thinks the string literal value "undefined" should mean the complete opposite of an undefined value. (Right? Right?? <smiles>)
> 
> Feedback encouraged.
> --joanie
> 
> [1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-aria/2017Jun/0058.html
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 24 July 2017 18:31:02 UTC