- From: Leif Halvard Silli <xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no>
- Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:42:01 +0100
- To: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Cc: John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>, Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com>, Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Silvia Pfeiffer, Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:14:49 +1100: > On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 4:56 PM, John Foliot wrote: >> Justification: as has previously been brought forward to the Working >> Group [1][2], hidden text (i.e. text not visible on screen) is >> flattened to string text _per the various Accessibility APIs_ Per ARIA, the 'flattened to string' issue is linked to the use of @aria-describedby/@aria-labelledby. Any content that is referenced via @aria-describedby, is 'flattened to string text'. Thus, 'flattened to string text' is not linked to @hidden in any way, AFAICT. > Maybe the a11y APIs need an update - since they, too, need to cope > with the challenge of the changes that have been made to HTML. I don't > think it's unreasonable to expect certain inconsistencies to emerge in > those tools that will need to be fixed. On the subject of APIs: Another way to describe what *currently* happens in APIs, is to say that the @aria-describedby referenced text *picks up* the mark-up features of the element from which it is referenced. Consider this example: <img lang=en aria-labelledby=desc > <h1 hidden lang=de id=desc >Das Bild</h1> Then, here 'Das Bild' would be read as if it was the @alt text for the img element. Thus, it is a bit like the how the 'Paste and Match Style' option in the Mac OS X TextEdit.app, for instance, works. And, thus, the 'flattened to string' could seen as a feature rather than a problem, and the problems related to the #desc element being in German, for instance, could be seen as an authoring issue: The author should see to that aria-labelledby/-describedby points to a same language resource. And therefore, there could be risks related to simply 'turning on' the mark-up features of content referenced via @aria-labelledby, as suggested by Jonas in his CP. For instance, in the example above, it could be very confusing if the 'heading-ness' of the h1 element was announced. Jonas' CP claims that ARIA recommends that content referenced via aria-describedby, should be revealed to the user. However, he does not point to any section in ARIA to justify that claim. The WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation GUide says: [*] ]] Note that aria-describedby may reference structured or interactive information where users would want to be able to navigate to different sections of content. User agents MAY provide a way for the user to navigate to structured information referenced by aria-describedby and assistive technology SHOULD provide such a method. [[ I guess this boils down to 'UAs/ATs may/should allow users to use links, buttons, ToCs etc that occur inside @aria-describedby referenced area'. I.e. not much detail. And also, not clear what if the very element referenced itself is a link. [*] http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-implementation/#mapping_additional_relations_reverse_relations -- Leif Halvard Silli
Received on Friday, 27 January 2012 10:42:45 UTC