Re: [math-on-web] a11y TF meeting minutes, 2017/04/10

I'm not sure if you can call one person a significant group. I'd rather say
a highly influential personality given that he is the tech lead on one of
the most used open source screen readers on Windows.
And yes he hates the idea of "deep labels" but not aria-labels in general.

Having said that, I've also had a chat with the developer of the main
screen reader on Chromebooks, who had no problems whatsoever with what
Peter proposes.

Best
Volker



On 13 Apr 2017 11:08 am, "Peter Krautzberger" <
peter.krautzberger@mathjax.org> wrote:

Hi Daniel,

> Volker says that “some people are opposed to aria-labels”.. T

IIRC, Volker was referrring to the deep-labels approach. There seems to be
a significant group in the a11y world (especially among AT developers) that
argue against the use of aria-labels (in favor the development of semantic
notation via roles and eventually tags).

> I do not understand the roledescription solution. Could someone rephrase
it?

This is the spec: https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#aria-roledescription

It allows authors to customize the roles representation within AT (if AT
supports it). Hence my comment that the argument that role="math" might be
misleading (for STE content) could be addressed by suggesting to use
role=math + aria-roledescription="physics".

Best,
Peter.

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:18 AM, Daniel Marques <dani@wiris.com> wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> After reading the minutes, let me comment on some of the subjects.
>
> Volker says that “some people are opposed to aria-labels”.. This is
> consistent with the fact that AT reads the text and ignores the
> aria-labels. It is also connected with the idea that some people don’t like
> accessible specific content.
>
> The role=math has its faults but does some of the job. I guess that it was
> a compromise reached time ago in order to use the aria-label (which seems
> to confirm what Volker said). If deprecated, an alternative should be
> provided. Maybe another role?
>
> I do not understand the roledescription solution. Could someone rephrase
> it?
>
> Dani
>
> On 12 Apr 2017, at 18:58, Peter Krautzberger <
> peter.krautzberger@mathjax.org> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> below are the minutes from the a11y task force meeting this week.
>
> Best,
> Peter.
>
> # math on web CG -- a11y TF
>
> * Updates.
>   * Peter: continued work on deep labels
>     * more examples
>     * more focused on SVG but should
>     * more recordings by Thursday, expect to confirm the validity
>     * one problem: tables mathJax svg vs commonthml
>       * ARIA 1.1 table-related roles should help
>   * Peter: also got an update from Jason Meryll
>     * where he described their work
>     * ACTION: ask Jason to make it public
>       * then reference on website
>   * Volker: from last CG meeting: hacked around with speech API
>     * prosidy support via SSML in speech synthesis API
>     * several tests
>     * no SSML support
>     * though VoiceOer had some specialized markup (see minutes)
>     * working on next few examples
> * Peter: role=math
>   * not much feedback from CG outside of a11y TF - which may have been
> obvious
>   * Volker: at w4a a11y hackathon, nobody even knew the role existed
>   * Peter: fun fact: James Craig mentioned that the role was derived from
> image role (which makes sense given the time)
>   * Peter: from MathJax end, we could delay until we get to working on
> turning deep labels into something for production
>   * Peter: given Daniel's comments from last TF meeting, maybe the groups
> recommendation should be to deprecate role=math.
>   * ACTION: ask CG for a recommendation
>     * point out that there are features that would help but that role-math
> serves no purpose
> * Volker: some people are opposed to aria-labels
> * Peter: new roles in ARIA 1.1
>   * e.g., table related roles
>   * e.g., roledescription
>     * Kevin: could be used to specify role='Math'
>       * Peter: right, argument to say that role is no longer necessary
>         * but also reversely: role='math' with roledescription='physisc'
> could argue "against" Daniel's concern.
> * Volker: will post some examples
>
>
>