- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 13:29:58 -0800
- To: Charles Pritchard <chuck@jumis.com>
- Cc: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com>, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Charles Pritchard <chuck@jumis.com> wrote: > On 2/1/12 11:44 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote: >>> >>> > It's completely non-backwards compatible, as hidden really does hide >>> > things, >>> > it takes them right out of several trees. >>> > >>> > That's the biggest issue. Regardless of ease of use or merit, it's too >>> > big >>> > of a departure from how all of the browsers out there currently work. >>> > It's >>> > too much work on AT vendors. >> >> I can only speak to how AT interact with Firefox. The AT software do >> not dig into the firefox layout trees directly, instead there is a >> special tree of objects specifically created for AT tools. This means >> that to make rich content work in display:none and @hidden content >> there are no changes required to change AT software, only Firefox >> needs to be changed. > > > Yes, browsers implement a separate "accessibility tree". > > Currently, "hidden" means hidden, for both non-sighted and sighted user. > That's intentional. I'm arguing that it should only mean hidden from the main flow of the page. That is how people are using it as you yourself has demonstrated (by calling .click() on hidden elements). I think that's how people will continue to use it no matter what the spec says. The reason for that is that it's a better model. >> Hence, the parties that we are asking to be changed here is not AT >> software but rather browsers. So far I have not heard browser claim >> that this is a too hard change to make. > > Yeah, you're hearing the claim from authors and a11y experts instead. > There's a reason for that. Please stop talking in riddles. What is the reason you are referring to. >> All I hear is people trying to keep status quo and worried about >> suggesting any changes to any software, rather than see what solution >> would lead to the best accessibility. > > I assure you, the a11y experts commenting on this thread have been working > in accessibility for a long time. > Yes, they are conservative, trying to keep some things the same. That's > because there is structure around those things. > > It would be nice if we could just turn on microdata, or just use ARIA, and > everything would just work. > > But that kind of viewpoint only works for forward-thinking browser vendors. No, it's the viewpoint you should have when writing specifications for future browsers. We are not writing best-practices documents for today's web here. We are trying to define how we want the future web to work. / Jonas
Received on Wednesday, 1 February 2012 21:30:55 UTC