Re: ISSUE-636 ACTION-1398 Provide spec. text for aria-roledescription

On 04/02/2014 03:25 AM, James Craig wrote:

> That doesn't preclude the usefulness of a localized role description
> though. It allows authors to make these reasonably understandable
> immediately, even if it takes us years to codify the entire role
> taxonomy,

Fair enough. But in the specific case of ATK/AT-SPI ATs, the usefulness
of a localized role description is less than the usefulness of our
existing platform accessibility API which provides:

1. A role type which makes it possible for ATs to determine what an
   object is functionally (video instead of group; slide instead of
   section)

2. A corresponding localized role description ready to go so that we
   can make them reasonably understandable ourselves.

Having said that, it admittedly does absolutely nothing for the other
platforms. So I'm thinking the best way forward might be to solve this
by a combination of localized role descriptions (target == not-ATK) and
UAIG mappings (for ATK).

In some cases I think it should JustWork(tm). Taking your earlier example,

>>> 1. <video> in HTML might default to <video role="group"
aria-roledescription="video">

For ATK, the role="group" should not be used for the mapping, preferring
instead the more specific ATK_ROLE_VIDEO based on the HTML tag.

Taking another example you had mentioned:

  3. SVG could use <g role="group" aria-roledescription="chart">

For ATK, hopefully we could have implementors map it to ATK_ROLE_CHART.

If no one objects to that approach, I'm happy to do what needs to be
done w.r.t. coming up with a list of ATK-only role mappings we'd find
preferable to role descriptions.

BUT that still leaves at least one noticeable/unmappable area: What
happens when there is no non-generic tag AND there is no ARIA role; just
the localized description? Consider this modification of your original
video example:

    <div role="group" aria-roledescription="video">

ATK still wants that mapped as ATK_ROLE_VIDEO, but there's no
programmatic way for the user agents to get there from here. Ideas?

>> Given an object the screen reader knows is a slide, if the bounds of a
>> focused object on that slide have suddenly changed, this event is
>> probably worth passing along to the end user. But, at least in my
>> experience, the slide situation is the exception and not the rule:
>> Bounds change often but those changes are often of no interest to the
>> user and should thus be filtered out by the screen reader.
>
> I agree that sounds useful, though slightly off-topic.

Thank you re useful. :) I don't think it is off-topic. At least for ATK
we have existing API through which Orca could:

1. present "slide" as the role AND
2. speak the "hey, you just moved your layout area down 20 pixels"

The first it could accomplish by falling back on a localized role
description. But the second is not something localized role descriptions
provide. And if you are a user who is blind actively editing slides in a
web app, how useful is it to hear "slide" (which you probably already
knew)? In contrast, how useful would it be to hear, "your layout area is
no longer where you want it to be?"

Maybe we cannot codify the entire role taxonomy, but perhaps if we have
some important usecases we are failing to address now, we can try to
turn those into proper ARIA roles for 1.1. That wouldn't mean we
couldn't also have localized role descriptions.

--joanie

Received on Wednesday, 2 April 2014 11:02:08 UTC