Response to your comments on Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0

Dear Becky Gibson:



Thank you for your comments on the 24 February 2009 Last Call Working
Draft of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20090224/). The Protocols and
Formats Working Group has reviewed all comments received on the draft. We
would like to know whether we have understood your comments correctly and
whether you are satisfied with our resolutions.



Please review our resolutions for the following comments, and reply to us
by 1 February 2010 to say whether you accept them or to discuss additional
concerns you have with our response. You can respond in the following
ways:



* If you have a W3C account, we request that you respond online at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/comments/acknowledge?document_version_id=1;



* Else, by email to public-pfwg-comments@w3.org (be sure to reference our
comment ID so we can track your response). Note that this list is publicly
archived.



Please see below for the text of comments that you submitted and our
resolutions to your comments. Each comment includes a link to the archived
copy of your original comment on
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/, and may also
include links to the relevant changes in the Accessible Rich Internet
Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 editors' draft at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/20091214/.



Due to the scope of changes made in response to comments on the Last Call
Working Draft of WAI-ARIA, we are returning the specification to Working
Draft status. We will shortly publish a public "stabilization draft" of
WAI-ARIA and updated Working Drafts of the accompanying documents. While
these versions will not incorporate further discussion based on your
acknowledgement of our response to your comments, we will work with you on
your feedback as part of our preparation for the following version. You are
also welcome to submit new comments on the new public versions in addition
to sending your acknowledgement of our response to your previous comments.



Note that if you still strongly disagree with our resolution on an issue,
you have the opportunity to file a formal objection (according to 3.3.2 of
the W3C Process, at
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#WGArchiveMinorityViews)
to public-pfwg-comments@w3.org. Formal objections will be reviewed during
the candidate recommendation transition meeting with the W3C Director,
unless we can come to agreement with you on a resolution in advance of the
meeting.



Thank you for your time reviewing and sending comments. Though we cannot
always do exactly what each commenter requests, all of the comments are
valuable to the development of Accessible Rich Internet Applications
(WAI-ARIA) 1.0.



Regards,



Janina Sajka, PFWG Chair

Michael Cooper, PFWG Staff Contact


Comment 40: comments on aria-hidden
Date: 2009-04-07
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2009AprJun/0032.html
Relates to: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 - aria-hidden (state) <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20090224/#aria-hidden>
Status: Accepted proposal

-------------
Your comment:
-------------
I find the section on aria-hidden a bit confusing [1]:

<quote>

If a menu is only visible after some user action, the aria-hidden
attributeshould be set to trueuntil the menu is presented and the
aria-hiddenattribute is removed, indicating that the menu is visible. This
allows the assistive technology to properly skip hidden elements in the
document.



It is recommended that authors key visibility of objectsoff this
attribute, rather than change visibility and separately have to remember to
update this property. CSS 2 provides a way to select on attribute values
([CSS], Section 5.8.1). The following CSS declaration makes content visible
unless the aria-hidden attribute is true; scripts need only update the
valueof this attribute to change visibility:

</quote>



The first paragraph implies that I should actually add and remove the
aria-hidden attribute rather than just changing the value from true to
false.  Is this really the case?  Does it really matter if I just toggle
the value using setAttribute("aria-hidden", newValue)  rather than doing
setAttribute("aria-hidden", true); and removeAttribute("aria-hidden")?



 But, to confuse matters,  the next paragraph instructs me to use CSS and
only change the value.  This recommendation seems to conflict the first
paragraph?  Although removing the attribute value itself should still
trigger the CSS rule properly since aria-hidden will no longer equal true. 
 Also, I think it should be noted that not all user agents support this CSS
2 selection feature.  Yes, you could argue that those same user agents also
don't support ARIA, but with or without ARIA I need my hide/show code to
work in IE 7 and I'd rather not have to code it twice - once using
scripting and again using CSS!



[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/#aria-hidden

--------------------------------
Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
We have accepted your proposal.

Received on Tuesday, 15 December 2009 00:34:06 UTC