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

On Apr 2, 2014, at 4:01 AM, Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs@igalia.com> wrote:

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

That's fine. One of the requirements for CR is at least two platform mappings, so it's not required that you implement them. That said, we know of at least 3 mappings for this in other APIs, so I hope you'll come around. 

> 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.

That's fair. When there is not a 1:1 role mapping with the host language attribute, authors SHOULD NOT specify the role attribute. 

> 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.

<g> is the generic group container in SVG, like <div>. You should not give <g> any specific role mapping like this. The approach will be to wait for the graphics-related roles that are currently being discussed with the SVG group. "chart" will almost certainly be one of those, but that list may or may not make it in time for ARIA 1.1.

> 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?

ATK should map this as ATK_ROLE_GROUP, not ATK_ROLE_VIDEO. 

No platform role mapping should change based on a localized role description string. That will need to be a normative requirement in the spec. User Agents MUST NOT modify the role mapping based on the localized @aria-roledescription.

>>> 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.

No disagreement here. There are lots of missing roles that we need to add. I'm just trying to come up with a flexible structure that allows accessibility-conscious authors to provide a more "understandable" experience (WCAG Guideline 3) when specific roles are not provided, or even not *yet* provided. Many of those roles will eventually be included in the ARIA spec (some in the 1.1 version) but some will never be, and in both cases, the ability to add a localized role description can help.

James

Received on Wednesday, 2 April 2014 18:26:00 UTC