RE: Question about ARIA Tab/Tablist/Tabpanel design pattern

All “should” requirements are related to making sure the current ‘tab’ and the corresponding ‘tabpanel’ are associated – e.g., by use of aria-controls or aria-labelledby.

There is no statement in the spec that says an element that represents a tabpanel ‘should’ be exposed as such.  Rather, if one were to look at the tablist definition, it explicitly states that it represents “a list of tab elements which are references to tabpanel elements”.

It does not state “a list of tab elements which are references to tabpanel elements and lol maybe also regions if you want, because whatever.”

However, if my read of the spec is somehow too draconian, then I hope the working group will consider my revised text to help clarify this allowance for tabs to reference region elements.

That was fun.  Thank you 😊


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From: Bryan Garaventa<mailto:bryan.garaventa@levelaccess.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 4, 2022 6:44 PM
To: ARIA<mailto:public-aria@w3.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Question about ARIA Tab/Tablist/Tabpanel design pattern

Hi,
This may sound like a stupid question, which it is, however I am compelled to ask on behalf of a client.

Is there any requirement in the ARIA spec that states that an ARIA tab design pattern must use role=tabpanel to represent the dynamic content associated with the expanded tab?

I was informed that there isn’t, since the reference to tabpanel is only a “should” whenever referenced in the spec and not a “must”.
https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.2/#tab<https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FTR%2Fwai-aria-1.2%2F%23tab&data=05%7C01%7Cscott.ohara%40microsoft.com%7Cd24e29b7850d4b2fb4f108da2e1f9e7c%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637873010970697824%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=0rzCIdckrHyCrB%2BQ7kyQZDYlSApagsERv%2FKFbzQX1jg%3D&reserved=0>

As such, I was told, it is perfectly valid according to the spec to use role=region instead. 😊

So, what do you think of that? Is there anything in the spec that says that the ARIA tab design pattern needs to use role=tabpanel instead of role=region to reference the expanded content of a tab?


Bryan Garaventa
Principal Accessibility Architect
Level Access, Inc.
Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com<mailto:Bryan.Garaventa@LevelAccess.com>
415.624.2709 (o)
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