OT Re: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs within touch screen devices, and does ARIA apply?

[This thread is going well off topic for ARIA standardization discussion, though it may be interesting to discuss some of the points on the IndieUI list.]

Bryan and Matt,

Did you file bug or enhancement reports as requested with any AT vendor? If so, privately send me the bug numbers for the Apple-related ones, but don’t forget to file relevant bugs against Android, WP, and FFOS, too.

> It really highlights some of the downsides of a touch-based screen reader that renders all visual elements. When reading by item, you have to swipe through the entire tree. 

As for the screen reader usability of this example, much could be improved for the sighted user interface of this example as well. Desktop design patter paradigms based on keyboard and mouse interaction don’t always transfer well to other modalities, hence the relevance to IndieUI.

Be careful to not confuse existing behavior (on any platform or device) with a fundamental incompatibility or limitation. Remember that only a few years ago, most accessibility “experts” assumed touchscreen interfaces would always be completely inaccessible. Never underestimate the power of software and a creative mind.

Let’s get back to talking about ARIA 1.1.

Cheers,
James


> On Apr 26, 2014, at 5:09 AM, Matthew King <mattking@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> On IOS 7.1, the aria-selected="true" is also not revealed. 
> 
> You can swipe through the content in the scrollable viewing pane, but even though the content reads, VO does not scroll it. so, if you touch outside the scrollable viewer, you have lost your place. 
> 
> If VO focus is inside the viewer, a three finger tap always says page 1 of 1; VO clearly does not recognize the scrollable div for what it is. 
> 
> Going off topic .... This is the first time I have looked at an ARIA tree view with VO in Safari. It really highlights some of the downsides of a touch-based screen reader that renders all visual elements. When reading by item, you have to swipe through the entire tree. Unlike VO in OSX or JAWS, you can't just skip past the tree with a single swipe (equivalent of pressing tab. While it is nice to touch anywhere and hear what is visually under your finger, e.g., one of the plus or minus signs for expanding and collapsing, it is not at all nice if you want to navigate by item. In fact, if the scrolled on for a long time, it could be a keyboard usability hell. 
> 
> I think it would be really nice if VO would somehow encapsulate composite web widgets like trees, listboxes, grids, and toolbars so there would be some single gesture manner for moving past it to the next element. I suppose the VO OSX interact and stop interacting concept could be used, but that would mean that touching the screen anywhere on that widget would have to speak the same thing instead of revealing what is immediately under the finger. I guess that would be OK; when interacting the standard touch to speak gesture could work. But then there would be the question of whether or not it would be desirable for the rest of the screen to not be interactive when inside the widget -- that could be both good and quite bad..... not an easy set of problems to think out. You wouldn't need any new gestures though -- double tap could start interaction and 2 finger scrub could stop it. Then, after you have made your tree selection, tapping anywhere on the tree would just announce the selected item, tree view, and the tree view name .... could be quite nice. 
> 
> Matt King
> IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
> I/T Chief Accessibility Strategist
> IBM BT/CIO - Global Workforce and Web Process Enablement 
> Phone: (503) 578-2329, Tie line: 731-7398
> mattking@us.ibm.com 
> 
> 
> 
> From:        "Bryan Garaventa" <bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com> 
> To:        "'James Craig'" <jcraig@apple.com>, 
> Cc:        "'W3C WAI Protocols & Formats'" <public-pfwg@w3.org> 
> Date:        04/25/2014 08:32 PM 
> Subject:        RE: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs within touch screen  devices, and does ARIA apply? 
> 
> 
> 
> Alright, how about this one?
> http://whatsock.com/tsg/Coding%20Arena/ARIA%20Trees/Tree%20(External%20XML)/
> demo2.htm
> Imagine an e-book reader, where, on the left, you have a scrollable index of
> the chapters that you can scroll through and activate, and to the right of
> that, you have a viewer pane where you can read specific chapters or
> articles.
> 
> E.G The above demo uses an ARIA Tree construct as the index mechanism, and a
> keyboard accessible scrollable div pane on the right for readers to view the
> desired scene from Hamlet.
> 
> The ARIA Tree is surrounded by a scrollable div that includes role="region"
> and aria-label="Hamlet, by William Shakespeare - Index", and the scrollable
> reader pane on the right includes role="region" and aria-label="Viewer".
> 
> So, in theory, it should be possible to view this using a mobile device like
> the iPhone/iPad in landscape mode, tap the Scene that you want to load after
> expanding the desired Act, then move focus into the scrollable "Viewer" pane
> on the right, and swipe up and down to review all of the content displayed
> there from top to bottom.
> 
> With regard to VoiceOver, this appears to expose several bugs, the first
> with ARIA Trees, where the expanded/collapsed state via aria-expanded within
> branch nodes is not conveyed, nor is the level information declared via
> aria-level, nor is the positioning information via
> aria-setsize/aria-posinset.
> 
> Additionally, none of the region information is conveyed, such as the
> explicit label for each region via role="region" + aria-label to convey its
> purpose and where the boundaries are, nor is it possible to swipe up and
> down to scroll the viewer content using VoiceOver, at least this isn't
> working for me using the iPhone with iOS7.
> 
> If anybody would like to try this using an Android with TalkBack to confirm
> functionality there too, that would be great.
> 
> All the best,
> Bryan
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Craig [mailto:jcraig@apple.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 11:35 PM
> To: Bryan Garaventa
> Cc: W3C WAI Protocols & Formats
> Subject: Re: What is the expected behavior of scrollable divs within touch
> screen devices, and does ARIA apply?
> 
> On Apr 24, 2014, at 10:33 PM, Bryan Garaventa
> <bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm not really sure where this would be handled though, would it be with
> the spec, or some spec, identifying a way for browsers to convey a textual
> representation exposed by scrollable regions that can be used by ATs, or is
> it simply a best practice for labeling and defining a region, and is it then
> up to the AT to ensure support for this even though it's not specified
> anywhere?
> 
> You could try coming up with an real world example where this is
> necessary-make sure you don't make it an contrived test case-and submitting
> it as a bug report to the various AT vendors. Like all software companies,
> AT vendors have a long list of work they intend to complete, and the more
> *real* you can make the example, the more likely it is to get a higher
> priority fix order. 
> 
> James
> 
> 
> 
>