Re: Possibility of moving Personalization Semantics out of ARIA and into APA

Hi Joanie

I am not sure what the methodology in deciding these criteria and definitions. They were  not the original intention of ARIA. (I wrote the first drafts.) Originally ARIA was to add semantics needed for accessibility that were missing. To solve the problems and roadblocks for inclusion.


In fact in the meeting in Germany (I think it was in 2006) we had some of the personlization semantics included. We decided to  postpone the cognitive part and focus on the impact on screen reader users first as it was an easier problem to solve. We voted and resolved to work on the context for cognitive AT as soon as the problem of dynamic interfaces and screen readers was solved (more or less). To overturn this resolution is to decide for aria to exclude cognitive after people from that community put in a lot of resources, in part, to help us get to the next stage.



1. ARIA does not control what content will be loaded - this is true also for personlization semantics
2. ARIA does not impact how loaded content will be displayed. - this is not always true. It effects the UI, and  can impact what is shown and hidden when things will be read and the tab order etc.  In a similar way to personlization semantics.
3. ARIA information is conveyed via accessibility APIs. Again I am not sure this is not always true. Sometimes we are leaders and the APIs move to meet us. in this case we are enabling new generation of accessibility support and it may well be in the future that accessibility apis map to what we are doing. I am not sure this works with epub module etc.




All the best

Lisa Seeman

LinkedIn, Twitter





---- On Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:58:26 +0300 Joanmarie Diggs<jdiggs@igalia.com> wrote ---- 

Hi Personalization Semantics Task Force members. 
 
As you may be aware, the charters of the ARIA and APA Working Groups are 
each about to expire. As part of the re-chartering process, both Working 
Groups need to identify their proposed deliverables. Personalization 
Semantics is currently listed as a deliverable of the ARIA Working 
Group, and we believe it would be a better fit for everyone as an APA 
deliverable. 
 
First and foremost are the technical aspects of implementation. In 
particular: 
 
1. ARIA does not control what content will be loaded. 
2. ARIA does not impact how loaded content will be displayed. 
3. ARIA information is conveyed via accessibility APIs specific to 
 individual platforms through mappings specs ("AAMs"). 
 
In other words, ARIA does not impact the experience of sighted users. 
This is by design. And it seems to be the opposite of what is described 
in the Personalization Semantics Explainer [1]. For instance, in section 
1.1 ("Why We Need Personalization"), it says the following: 
 
 Some users need extra support. This can include: 
 * Symbols and graphics that they are familiar with 
 * Tooltips 
 * Language they understand 
 * Less features 
 * Separating advertisements, so they do not confuse them with native 
 content 
 * Keyboard short cuts 
 
In order to address those needs, the experience of sighted users is 
necessarily impacted: Personalization by definition is to make 
determinations regarding what gets included on screen, what gets 
excluded, and how rendered content should appear. ARIA does not do that. 
 
Furthermore, achieving the Personalization needs listed above does not 
require the behind-the-scenes information consumed by platform-specific 
assistive technologies. You should be able to achieve Personalization 
Semantics support much more quickly and easily than ARIA -- and in a way 
that works in all operating systems -- via browser extensions. Indeed 
there is already at least one proof of concept demonstrating this. 
 
It also seems that using ARIA-style states and properties is only one 
proposed method of implementing the desired outcome. The Personalization 
explainer lists HTML microdata and RDF/A as other potential 
implementation techniques. Having this specification within the ARIA 
working group seems to unnecessarily require an ARIA-style 
implementation which may not be the best outcome for the specification. 
 
That said, Personalization Semantics is an essential module and a key 
part of WAI and needs a home. If that home is not within the ARIA 
Working Group, where should it be? We do think Personalization Semantics 
can benefit from the support of being housed within an existing WAI 
Working Group so that those working on achieving it can focus on doing 
so. That, combined with the fact that APA is considering including 
normative deliverables in its upcoming charter, makes us think that APA 
would be a much better fit for continuing this work. 
 
Please let us know your thoughts on this matter. Thanks! 
--Joanie and James 
 
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/personalization-semantics-1.0/