RE: Response to your comments on WAI-ARIA 1.0 Authoring Practices

Re. Comment 325: Popups - live regions

Thanks for adding live regions to the glossary. I accept this response. tt

-----Original Message-----
From: Janina Sajka [mailto:janina@a11y.org] 
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2010 11:30 AM
To: Terrill Thompson
Cc: PFWG Public Comments
Subject: Response to your comments on WAI-ARIA 1.0 Authoring Practices

Comment 325: Popups - live regions
Date: 2010-03-23
Archived at: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-pfwg-comments/2010JanMar/0045.html
Relates to: WAI-ARIA 1.0 Authoring Practices - 5.2.  Implementing Live Regions  <http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-practices-20091215/#LiveRegions>
Status: Alternate action taken

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Your comment:
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What exactly is a live region? The term is used repeatedly throughout the
ARIA spec, but nowhere do I see it actually defined within the spec. The
only definition I could find outside the spec is in section 5.2 of WAI-ARIA
Authoring Practices 1.0:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#LiveRegions

There, it is said that "Live regions are part of a Web page that the
author expects to change". The phrase "Live Regions" in that definition is
a link to the ARIA spec, to an id that doesn't seem to exist:  
http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#liveregions

Given this limited definition, I wonder whether the popup div in my popup
use case might be a live region, and therefore all live region properties,
including aria-live="assertive", would apply, and would result in the
desired effect as describe at the top of this message. If a popup div is
not a live region, why not? What criteria does it fail to meet? 

--------------------------------
Response from the Working Group:
--------------------------------
We have added a glossary definition for live region that is now referenced
throughout the specification. A pop-up is the direct result of a user
action and should not be marked as a live region. Popup's will be spoken
automatically provided that you have an element within it that has focus. 

Here is our glossary definition of a "live region":

Live regions are perceivable regions of a web page that are updated as a
result of an external event from areas of the page which have user focus.
These regions are not generally regions of the page that are updated as
result of a user interaction. This practices has become common place with
the growing use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJax). Examples of live
regions are chat logs or a sport scoring section that updates periodically
to reflect game statistics. Since these asynchronous areas may update
outside the user's area of focus, assistive technologies such as screen
readers have either been unaware of their existence or how to process them
for the user. WAI-ARIA has provided a collection of properties that allow
the author to identify these live regions  and how to process them:
aria-live, aria-relevant, aria-atomic, and aria-busy.  WAI-ARIA has a
collection of pre-defined roles that are forms of live regions.

As for your pop-up use case we need more information. It could be a
tooltip, a dialog, or a menu or perhaps not a pop-up at all. The aria
specification is clear in that aria-popup only refs to menus as it maps
directly to an accessibility API intended for this purpose. Please provide
more information.

Received on Friday, 23 July 2010 18:16:35 UTC