Comment on WAI-ARIA Role

Document: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.0 Working
Draft 15 December 2009 <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20091215/>


Concern: Screen readers sometimes miss text updates to small areas of
the screen. It could be values in a timer (role="timer") or text on a
toggle button (role="button" aria-pressed="false") where the text change
is not noticed. I suspect screen reader manufacturers will (do) have
screen readers pay more attention to updates in areas when such aria
settings are present as they imply that the area may change. It would be
good, though, to have a specific setting that says, "watch for changes
in this area" even when announcements to the user are not appropriate.
Perhaps aria-live should have a setting aria-live="quiet". Then a role
like timer could have aria-live="quiet" as a default.  Another
possibility (following the model of aria-pressed) would be to have
aria-live set to "undefined" by default and have aria-live="off" mean
that the area of the screen should be watched for changes.

Suggested Change: (Added a fourth value & changed 'presented' to
'announced' as I don't think there should be any settings that indicate
the change would not be reflected the next time the user navigates to
that object.)

Values of aria-live

Value

Description

undefined (default)

Updates to the region will not be announced to the user. 

off:

Updates to the region will not be announced to the user. Assistive
technology MAY give the area special attention in terms of monitoring
the area for change.

polite:

(Background change) Assistive technology SHOULD announce updates at the
next graceful opportunity, such as at the end of speaking the current
sentence or when the user pauses typing.

assertive:

This information has the highest priority and assistive technology
SHOULD notify the user immediately. Because an interruption may
disorientate users or cause them to not complete their current task,
authors SHOULD NOT use the assertive value unless the interruption is
imperitive.

Or, perhaps, to be a little more user-friendly:

Values of aria-live

Value

Description

off (default):

Updates to the region will not be announced to the user.

quiet:

Updates to the region will not be announced to the user. Assistive
technology MAY give the area special attention in terms of monitoring
the area for change.

polite:

(Background change) Assistive technology SHOULD announce updates at the
next graceful opportunity, such as at the end of speaking the current
sentence or when the user pauses typing.

assertive:

This information has the highest priority and assistive technology
SHOULD notify the user immediately. Because an interruption may
disorientate users or cause them to not complete their current task,
authors SHOULD NOT use the assertive value unless the interruption is
imperitive.

Thanks for considering this and thanks for this wonderful specification
that will do so much for this field, 

Suzanne

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Suzanne Taylor

Senior Media Accessibility Specialist 

User Experience Group, LTG

PEARSON