Re: Change proposal for ISSUE-85

I would like to point out at this time that ian's counter proposal
currently only pertains to role="button". my proposal, discussed and
supported by the accessibility taskforce,
(http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/ARIAonanchor) relates
to
 the following roles: button, link, menuitem, menuitemcheckbox,
menuitemradio, radio, slider, scrollbar or progressbar.

regards
Stevef

On 16 June 2010 08:22, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2010, at 08:46, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>
>> One thing that would be good to get clarified is how a UA is supposed
>> to handle <a role=button>.
> [...]
>> I think a good argument could be made that if someone has gone through
>> the trouble to add 'role=button' to an element, then that is likely
>> the most accurate role. Thus I think a reasonable argument could be
>> made that we should forward this information to AT users.
>
> Indeed. I think <a role=button> should be reported to accessibility APIs as a button.
>
> This is tied to the stylability of <a>. If <a> can be styled to look like a button, there should be a mechanism for reporting it as a button via AT, too.
>
> Furthermore, if styling it as a button is not a machine-checkable conformance error, reporting it to AT as a button should not be a machine-checkable conformance error, either, because flagging the AT side but not the visual side as conforming would likely more often have a negative effect than have the positive effect of authors replacing <a> with <button> or <input type=button>. The particular negative effects I can foresee are either making the Web application less accessible (by omitting role altogether) or making things more complex by adding role via JS.
>
> On the other hand, I think http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9871 should be WONTFIXed unless addEventListener is made not to have an effect on <a>, but doing that would probably Break the Web.
>
> To cast the above as objections: I object to Hixie's no-change proposal to ISSUE 85 and I object to fixing bugs 9871 and 9872.
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
>



-- 
with regards

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

www.paciellogroup.com | www.wat-c.org
Web Accessibility Toolbar -
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html

Received on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 08:44:34 UTC