Re: changes to headings in ARIA in HTML5

On Sat, 9 Apr 2011, Steve Faulkner wrote:
>
> Hi ian,
> you wrote on IRC:
> 
>    1. <Hixie> oh wow, this is awesome
>    2. # <http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20110409#l-97> [01:09]
>    <Hixie> the aria thing actually breaks h1-h6 in ATs
>    3. # <http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20110409#l-98> [01:10]
>    <Hixie> (it removes their nesting depth)
>    4. # <http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20110409#l-100> [01:10] *
>    Hixie cries a little inside
> 
> As i know this is of great concern to I think you will be pleased to find
> out that youhave misinterpreted the changes to headings:
> 
> If you had looked at the spec changes i had provided and which Sam and I
> pointed you [1] to you and Sam had agreed was representative of the decison
> you would have seen that
> Hx continues to have the same default role and allowed role of heading:
> "heading role, with the aria-level property set to the element's outline
> depth"
> 
> I don't think that the other chairs would disagree?

The changes you describe are quite clearly not at all an occurate 
portrayal of the decision, since there are changes listed there that are 
not listed in the change proposal at all. For example, your document has 
all manner of changes relating to tables, which are not even mentioned in 
the change proposal or the decision. Plus, regarding headings 
specifically, your table suggests that authors should be required to apply 
an aria-level="" property to every heading, which is just absurd.

I confirmed with Maciej before making the change that the list in the spec 
is in fact what the decision was, and after going through the change 
proposal details and the decision himself, he agreed that bug 10066 
comment 33 accurately represented the change proposal and decision.

Given that the decision has all manner of what I consider mistakes (e.g. 
it is inconsistent about whether menuitemradio and radio vs 
menuitemcheckbox and checkbox should apply at the same time, it gives 
different allowed roles for <area> and <a>, it has the quite ludicrous 
decision of allowing buttons to be exposed as links and radio buttons, and 
it even allows a heading to be made into a treeitem, not to mention the 
issue above regarding not allowing headings to be marked as headings), I 
intend to exactly follow the chairs' decision as written here, and not 
apply my own judgement.

If we're allowed to start questioning the decision, there are certainly a 
lot of things I'm eager to have changed as well.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Sunday, 10 April 2011 17:15:01 UTC