Re: Proposal: Add a modal element to html5 to indicate a modal segment of the DOM (modal dialog)

Hi Everett,

I heartily support this, as its a major and common issue for keyboard and
assistive technology users.



you wrote:

"Add a modal element to html5 to indicate a modal segment of the DOM (modal
dialog)"

any reason why it could not be a modal attribute?

bruce wrote: quoting Ian Hickson,

"I’d add it to HTML 5, but there are so many new features already that we
need to wait for the browsers to catch up."

This is not a decision for the editor to make, but if we are concerned about
the load on browser vemdors, we could drop the hidden attribute from HTML5,
which is a new feature that has been stated by the editor being a major boon
to accessibility, but adds little that is not already handled by the use of
CSS display and visibility properties.

regards
SteveF
On 17 September 2010 12:46, E.J. Zufelt <everett@zufelt.ca> wrote:

>  Good morning,
>
> I would appreciate any thoughts on this proposal prior to filing a bug.
>  Especially if anyone has additional resources to add at the end of the
> proposal (Implementations and Best practices).
>
>
>
> Summary:
> Add a modal element to html5 to indicate a modal segment of the DOM (modal
> dialog)
>
> Description:
>
> Issue:
>
> html5 does not currently specify a mechanism to indicate that a segment of
> the DOM is modal.
>
> Modal dialogs are common in many desktop and web UI toolkits.  It is
> currently possible to create modal dialog behaviour using CSS, Javascript,
> and WAI-ARIA.  It is not, however, easy to create a robust modal dialog
> using these compatible technologies.
>
> Proposal:
>
> (Normative)
>
> 1. Add a modal element to the html5 specification.
>
> 2. When a modal element is present in the DOM UAs must treat the modal
> element and its children as a modal segment of the DOM.
>
> 2.1 UAs must constrain input / interaction events (e.g. keyboard and mouse)
> to the modal segment of the DOM.
>
> 2.2 UAs must map only the modal segment of the DOM to the accessibility
> tree.
>
> 3. If focus has not been explicitly set to an element in the modal segment
> of the DOM, UAs must set focus to the first focusable element.
>
> (Informative)
>
> 4. Authors must provide a device agnostic mechanism to dismiss the modal
> segment of the DOM.
>
> 5. Authors should return focus to the element from which the modal segment
> of the DOM was activated upon its dismissal.
>
> Resources:
>
> Implementations of web UI modal dialogs
>
> Drupal 7 Overlay (core module to display administrative pages).
> http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules--overlay--overlay.module/7
>
> jQuery UI - Dialog Demos & Documentation
> http://jqueryui.com/demos/dialog/
>
> YUI 2: SimpleDialog
> http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/container/simpledialog/
>
> Best practices for accessible modal dialogs
>
> WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.0: 3.3 Making a Dialog Modal
> http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/#dialog_modal
>
> DHTML Style Guide | dev.aol.com: 8. Dialog (Modal)
> http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide#dialogmodal
>
>
>
>   Everett Zufelt
> http://zufelt.ca
>
> Follow me on Twitter
> http://twitter.com/ezufelt
>
> View my LinkedIn Profile
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/ezufelt
>
>
>
>


-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG Europe
Director - Web Accessibility Tools Consortium

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
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