ARIA "status" role definition should make clear that it is intended to be a status bar from Maciej Stachowiak on 2010-08-26 (public-pfwg-comments@w3.org from July to September 2010)

From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:52:59 -0700
To: public-pfwg-comments@w3.org
Cc: Steve Faulkner <sfaulkner@paciellogroup.com>
Message-id: <1132D68F-4794-43CF-BB5A-1D552BE1831F@apple.com>

The ARIA definition of the "status" role says:

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A container whose content is advisory information for the user but is not important enough to justify an alert. Also see alert.
Authors MUST provide status information content within a status object. Authors SHOULD ensure this object does not receive focus.

Status is a form of live region. If another part of the page controls what appears in the status, authors SHOULD make the relationshipexplicit with the aria-controls attribute.
------------


This seems very general, and like something that could apply to the HTML5 <output> element for instance. However, according to Steve Faulkner, this is meant to be mapped to a status bar role in platform accessibility APIs, which would likely make it inappropriate for <output>. Please correct the definition in ARIA to make clear that it is not intended to be used only for status bars or similar constructs.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Thursday, 26 August 2010 09:53:32 UTC