Re: Graphics ARIA Roadmap

Hi Amelia,

I would support making a richer taxonomy and would support building a
jQuery widget for exploring data visualizations. I would really like to get
a haptic tablet and see if we can make graphics touchable and work with a
screen reader.

If we can show a benefit for adding ARIA markup on graphics, I believe
folks that create charts will be willing to add markup to business and
scientific charts.

Regards,

Fred Esch

On Tue, May 8, 2018, 7:06 PM Amelia Bellamy-Royds <
amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Joanie asked me to review the graphics-related bits of the ARIA roadmap
> <https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/roadmap> & deliverables timeline
> <https://www.w3.org/2018/03/draft-aria-charter#timeline> (for the new
> charter) that were put together at last week's face-to-face meeting.
>
> I've already sent the following comments to her & the other chairs. I'm
> sharing now with everyone in anticipation of a discussion on the next ARIA
> WG call (which I plan to join):
>
> For the roadmap: "Add new roles/attributes to achieve parity with SVG
> elements"
>
>    - The graphics ARIA (Ievel 1) roles mostly achieve this. The exception
>    are the text elements, which don't have directly mapping roles. However,
>    those text roles would directly map to roles equivalent to HTML <p> and
>    <span>, so it may not be necessary to track this requirement separately for
>    SVG.
>
>    - The only other potential SVG-specific feature might be <view>.
>    SVG-AAM currently recommends that it should be exposed only through the
>    effects it has on a target <svg> element, but we do have a large open
>    issue <https://w3c.github.io/svg-aam/#issue-8> about it.  If a
>    different approach is chosen, a new role may be required.
>
> For the timeline deliverables:
>
>    - I do not currently expect there to be a "Graphics ARIA 1.1" (or 1.2)
>    spec. There is no planned incremental enhancement to the three foundational
>    roles in the current spec. As mentioned above, the roles that are required
>    for SVG parity would be shared with HTML and therefore included in the
>    update to the main ARIA spec.  (This could change depending on the <view>
>    issues, but that's very hypothetical currently.)
>
>    - There has in the past been extensive discussion about establishing a
>    complete graphics taxonomy of roles for charts, diagrams, and maps (axes,
>    legends, data points, data series, connectors, regions, etc. and so on).
>    This was always discussed as a full "Level 2" Graphics ARIA Roles spec.
>    The numbering may not be that important, but it should be clear that this
>    is not a minor undertaking.  It would involve creating roles & attributes
>    that do not correspond to anything that is currently exposed to or consumed
>    by assistive tech through standard Accessibility APIs.
>
>    - I don't know whether it is possible to set any timelines for
>    deliverables of the next level Graphics Role spec until we have some
>    commitments from people to edit it & implement it. As it currently stands,
>    it would definitely not be reasonable to expect it to get to full
>    recommendation status within a year and a half.  Q4 2020 might be a
>    feasible deadline, but it would remain aspirational until there is a team
>    in place working on the plan.
>
>    - We would need active people from multiple implementation teams, at
>    all levels of implementation (authoring tools, browsers, OS accessibility
>    APIs, and assistive tech tools of different types), to get this from
>    theoretical proposal to a practical addition to the web platform.
>
> A couple weeks ago, it was agreed to close down the SVG Accessibility Task
> Force for lack of activity. It or something similar could be revived if
> there was a group of people eager and able to work on more advanced
> approaches to accessible graphics.  But I truly believe that it's not
> enough just to have spec editors, we need implementers, too.
>
> On a somewhat-related note, SVG-AAM <https://w3c.github.io/svg-aam/>
> should be republished as an updated working draft this week (after various
> delays with the publishing process).  We'd very much appreciate feedback on
> the remaining open issues.  The next step is the test suite, and we're
> trying to organize a small team to work on it. Please let me know if you're
> able to contribute to that.
>
> Best,
> Amelia Bellamy-Royds
>
>