Re: aria mappings

On Sep 22, 2009, at 5:02 PM, Jim Jewett wrote:

> Aria mappings have been tricky enough that I'm sending it here for
> review instead of just posting a bug.
>
> input type=color and input type= (datetime, date, month, week, time,
> datetime-local) are defined with no role.
>
> I think that these should have role=spinbutton
>
> According to http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#spinbutton
>
> A form of range that expects a user to select from amongst discrete  
> choices.

In practice, I don't think the UIs for these will be useful to reflect  
to assistive technology as if it were a spin button.

> A spinbutton typically allows the user to select from the given range
> through the use of an up and down button on the keyboard. Visibly, the
> current value is incremented or decremented until a maximum or minimum
> value is reached. This functionality SHOULD be accomplished
> programmatically through the use of up and down arrows on the
> keyboard.

We'd be very unlikely to implement color selection in Safari in a way  
that allows colors to be selected by using up and down arrows. It's  
much more likely we'd make it a button that pops up the standard color  
selection dialog, and also acts as a drop target for colors. For date  
types also, we'd probably use a control that pops up the actual  
selector rather than something that looks like a spin button.

For many of these controls, there are multiple viable implementation  
strategies for the exact UI. I don't think the spec should assume a  
particular implementation in designating the accessibility behavior.

>
> Although a spinbutton is similar in appearance to many presentations
> of select, it is advisable to use spinbutton when working with known
> ranges (especially in the case of large ranges) as opposed to distinct
> options. For example, a spinbutton representing a range from 1 to
> 1,000,000 would provide much better performance than a select widget
> representing the same values.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 23 September 2009 00:42:52 UTC