RE: Proposal on accessibility bugs the HTML A11Y task force should take on

Michael and All,

From the second list of bugs here, those you feel are not appropriate for the task force but may be for other groups, is there value in having the task force alerting the other groups to these bugs at all?

Looking through this list I do see some that UAAG should likely be concerned with and will raise those within our group but I'm wondering  if the task force should provide general awareness to other WAI groups of bugs in this category.  This could be as simple as an e-mail saying we think you should consider providing feedback/taking action on the following bugs.

Kelly


From: public-html-a11y-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-a11y-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Michael Cooper
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 7:50 AM
To: HTML Accessibility Task Force
Subject: Proposal on accessibility bugs the HTML A11Y task force should take on


I took a look at bugs tagged with the a11y keyword (http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/buglist.cgi?product=HTML+WG&keywords=a11y). This executes ACTION-9.

Apologies that this is a gargantuan email. There are 92 bugs considered here. My goals were to find a minimal set of bugs that would benefit from group attention, on the bug or the larger issue of which it is a part.

Here are the bugs I think should become formal task force bugs. If I think there is a natural group for the bug, I indicate that in brackets after the bug. I will talk more about the groupings in a separate message.

  1.  5758 insufficient accessibility fallback for <audio> or <video> [media]
  2.  6494 Make the requiredness about alt more obvious [text alternatives]
  3.  7011 canvas accessible fallback provision is under specified [canvas]
  4.  7362 inclusion of the title as a case where the alt may be omitted is problematic [text alternatives]
  5.  7404 "but only if the element is being rendered" needs to take into account <canvas> descendants if we're making them focusable [canvas]
  6.  7539 Since @summary is an official part of the table element, it is no longer obsolete. Suffienct warning language exists in it's definition that this entry should be removed [summary]
  7.  7633 The use of @summary should be encouraged when circumstances warrant [summary]
  8.  7721 Drag and Drop is not keyboard accessible [drag and drop]
  9.  8000 ARIA roles added to the a element should be conforming in HTML5 [aria]
  10. 8144 Is a 'visibility: hidden' element being rendered? [display]
  11. 8171 Implement the text alternatives proposal from WAI [text alternatives]
  12. 8187 Section 4.8.7 on video makes no reference to audio description [media]
  13. 8524 Guidance for Authoring Tool Markup Generators [text alternatives]
  14. 8554 <progress> element should be labelable with a label [labels]
  15. 8622 Activation behaviour and pre-click activation [focus]
  16. 8644 Fallback mechanism for embedded content [text alternatives]
  17. 8645 Alt text for images [text alternatives]
  18. 8647 Define tab order for IFrame [focus]
  19. 8648 Title attribute on the IFrame element [labels]
  20. 8652 what to display when images are not available is not well specified [display]
  21. 8657 Allow UA to reload fallback content if it fails to load [display]
  22. 8659 Media events to indicate captions and audio descriptions [media]
  23. 8666 Keyboard accessible date pickers [focus]
  24. 8671 Requiring the label attribute [labels]
  25. 8673 Restriction on command element as part of a menu [display]
  26. 8682 Tab and reading order for context menus [focus]
  27. 8716 Replace img Guidance for Conformance Checkers with Suggested Text for Short Text Alternatives [text alternatives]
  28. 8717 Usability and Element-level-focus-apis [focus]
  29. 8722 focus behaviour should be same for canvas regions as for elements [canvas]
  30. 8723 image map is underspecified [focus]
  31. 8738 Role-based navigation [focus]
  32. 8740 How do pseudo-class selectors interact with WAI-ARIA? [aria]
  33. 8743 Auditory icons clashing with AT [display]
  34. 8747 Defining how a license applies to elements [semantics]
  35. 8750 User able to override the hidden attribute in incorrectly rendered pages [display]
  36. 8751 User should have ability to override automatic scrolling [display]
  37. 8752 Allow user to manage focus changes [focus]
  38. 8753 Undo for drag and drop [drag and drop]
  39. 8754 Overflow when text is resized [display]

A note about a number of these bugs marked as "need more information" - in a lot of cases I agree there isn't enough information to act on the bug. I suggest we take an early pass on just expanding the problem statement in these bugs, before coming back in a more considered pass to work on solutions for them. That exercise might also help us to be collectively more familiar with the set of bugs on the plate for the task force.

I'm trying to keep the set of task force bugs as small as possible in order to give us a fighting chance of getting through it all (though still arrived at 39), but this means a lot of bugs that are important to accessibility are on the "not for the task force list". The following bugs I think do not need formal consideration by the task force. Some of these may be important, but I don't believe they would be controversial or difficult to work out from an accessibility advocacy perspective. Others are, in my personal opinion, issues for other specs (WCAG, UAAG, ATAG, and others) and so not ones we need to spend task force time on even though they're important. We should expect the usual HTML process to proceed with those. Some individual or another group may need to take ownership of them and advocate for them, if they need escalation. Those individuals may be members of the task force or others. If the task force agrees not to take these on, we may want to issue a general call for advocates, otherwise the bugs could end up being closed due to insufficient expressed support.

  1.  5807 User Agent display of title attribute content not defined
  2.  6181 Process table feedback (including headers='" issue) [table headers]
  3.  6462 Self-reference and cyclic references in headers='' [table headers]
  4.  7144 I am not sure if we are ditching ALT in favour of legend. You don't make this clear here. Some of your alt examples here resemble longdesc, which I am in favour of ditching completely. I'd be interested to see your answer on whatwg list about this [text alternatives]
  5.  7260 Create testsuite for table headers association [table headers]
  6.  8088 Change back the meaning of <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="FOO, BAR">
  7.  8118 Remove the Hidden Attribute
  8.  8379 Remove Section 4.11.1 The Details Element
  9.  8404 Refocus the figure element back to being a figure
  10. 8449 Remove extraneous material from Table section [table headers]
  11. 8522 Authoring Tool editing mechanisms
  12. 8523 WYSYWYG tools should gather semantic information
  13. 8525 Authoring Tools are exempt from using elements only for their specified purpose
  14. 8617 Purpose of the icon attribute
  15. 8619 Problematic for assistive technologies
  16. 8620 No concept of interoperability beyond the site
  17. 8621 Orphan nodes in content models
  18. 8623 Graceful degradation when using the style element
  19. 8643 Headings out of sequence
  20. 8646 Private communication exception
  21. 8649 Resize IFrame
  22. 8656 Allow user to select fallback content for the object element
  23. 8658 Availability of captions or additional audio tracks
  24. 8660 Context for areas on an image map [text alternatives]
  25. 8661 Contradiction of dimension attributes
  26. 8667 Ability to style validation errors
  27. 8668 Clarify default behavior for the details element
  28. 8669 Ability to wrap a command around a larger group of elements
  29. 8670 Parent for radiobuttons with same radiogroup
  30. 8672 Synthetic clicks same as real clicks
  31. 8674 Add popup as a value for the type attribute for menu element
  32. 8679 Menu example contains a violation of WCAG 2.0
  33. 8680 Meaningful label in menu example
  34. 8861 Separator menu items
  35. 8683 UA context menu when author context menu shown
  36. 8684 Ensuring user can always access UA's default context menus
  37. 8698 add conformance criteria info to header/banner [aria]
  38. 8700 modify contentinfo mapping and conformance [aria]
  39. 8701 modify main role conformance info [aria]
  40. 8715 Scrolling elements into view
  41. 8736 Decision to playback for media should be left to the user agent [media]
  42. 8737 Allowing option with no value to be a command
  43. 8739 Link element with active pseudo-class
  44. 8742 User informed when URI can#t be resolved
  45. 8745 Deprecation of the use of TABLE for Layout
  46. 8746 Text separator between links in markup example
  47. 8748 Differentiating hyperlinks referring to the same tag in different scopes
  48. 8749 Conveying the hierarchy or relationship between the links to AT
  49. 8755 Automatic reduction of text-size is unnecessary

The following bugs are closed or duplicates, and therefore also shouldn't need further review.

  1.  5822 The headers attribute should be able to reference a td [table headers]
  2.  5823 Scope allowable on a td [table headers]
  3.  6496 Allow <img aria-labelledby> to act as a caption [text alternatives] [aria]
  4.  7740 Authoring advice for canvas is bad for accessibility [canvas]
--

Michael Cooper
Web Accessibility Specialist
World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative
E-mail cooper@w3.org<mailto:cooper@w3.org>
Information Page<http://www.w3.org/People/cooper/>