RE: ACTION-1440: landmarks section uses "region of page" in prose even though "region" is not a landmark

Birkir Gunnarsson wrote:
> I am wondering, what would be the harm of making “region” an actual 
> landmark role (provided all of the things Matt has mentioned, 
> specifically requiring region to be labelled in order to become 
visible).

The new The definition of landmark region I proposed does this. It says 
that a landmark region is a region that either has:
1. A specific landmark type (role) that identifies the purpose of the 
content of the region (main, navigation, contentinfo, etc)
OR
2. It is a region with a label that describes the purpose of the content.

By this definition, a region with a label becomes a landmark.

> Matt’s proposal woul leave “region” somewhere in no man’s land by 
> itself, and other people on this list feel like webpage authors may 
> require a more generic landmark for large sections of page content 
> that should be grouped, but that do not fit under any of the current
> landmark roles.

If adopted, this proposal has role region with one child (abstract 
landmark). Each child of landmark identifies a specific type of region 
content. 
As I mention in the proposal, the landmark role wouldn't really serve any 
useful purpose in the ontology and could be eliminated.
While eliminating the landmark role would make the ontology cleaner, it is 
more editing work and is not necessary to achieve the clarity we are 
seeking.
However, it might strengthen understanding that labeled regions are 
landmarks because without a landmark role in the ontology, the glossary 
definition of landmark would be the one and only classifier. 
In that case, we would also need to either edit or remove section 5.3.4 
(Landmark Roles). 

> Region could easily fill that void, in fact it rather does, the way 
> it is used today.

Agree 100%.

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

"Birkir Gunnarsson" <birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com> wrote on 12/02/2014 
06:06:51 AM:

> From: "Birkir Gunnarsson" <birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com>
> To: Fred Esch/Arlington/IBM@IBMUS, "'WAI Protocols & Formats'" 
> <public-pfwg@w3.org>, 
> Date: 12/02/2014 06:18 AM
> Subject: RE: ACTION-1440: landmarks section uses "region of page" in
> prose even  though "region" is  not a landmark
> 
> Great ideas people.
> I am wondering, what would be the harm of making “region” an actual 
> landmark role (provided all of the things Matt has mentioned, 
> specifically requiring region to be labelled in order to become 
visible).
> Matt’s proposal woul leave “region” somewhere in no man’s land by 
> itself, and other people on this list feel like webpage authors may 
> require a more generic landmark for large sections of page content 
> that should be grouped, but that do not fit under any of the current
> landmark roles.
> Region could easily fill that void, in fact it rather does, the way 
> it is used today.
> 
> 
> From: Fred Esch [mailto:fesch@us.ibm.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, December 2, 2014 8:41 AM
> To: WAI Protocols & Formats
> Subject: Re: ACTION-1440: landmarks section uses "region of page" in
> prose even though "region" is not a landmark
> 
> Matt,
> 
> I generally agree with what you are saying except for not making 
> landmark concrete. Products I deal with would like a landmark that 
> they could label and don't think the regions they are producing 
> match well to the HTML elements with default landmark roles. 

> 
> Regards, 
> 
> Fred Esch 
> Accessibility, Watson Innovations
> AARB Complex Visualization Working Group Chair 
> [image removed] 
> 
> [image removed] 
> 
> 
> 
> [image removed] Matthew King---12/01/2014 10:56:55 PM---After 
> today's lengthy discussion of action 1440, I gave the issues raised 
> during the call a fresh l
> 
> From: Matthew King/Fishkill/IBM@IBMUS
> To: WAI Protocols & Formats <public-pfwg@w3.org>
> Date: 12/01/2014 10:56 PM
> Subject: ACTION-1440: landmarks section uses "region of page" in 
> prose even though "region" is  not a landmark
> 
> 
> 
> 
> After today's lengthy discussion of action 1440, I gave the issues 
> raised during the call a fresh look. A difficulty facing several of 
> the proposed solutions, which was pointed out several times by James
> Craig, is that in addition to landmark, other subclasses of region 
> include alert, article, grid, list, log, status, and tabpanel. I 
> propose that this is actually the root of the problem. This is what 
> prevents us from clarifying requirements associated with the region 
role. 
> 
> Please consider the following. 
> 
> First, the description of region, which was not being fundamentally 
> disputed is: 
> "A large perceivable section of a web page or document, that is 
> important enough to be included in a page summary or table of 
> contents, for example, an area of the page containing live sporting 
> event statistics." 
> 
> Now, ask yourself, is a list, grid, tabpanel, alert, or status 
> element necessarily a large perceivable section of a web page or 
> document, that is important enough to be included in a page summary 
> or table of contents? 
> 
> I believe the answer is clearly "no!" 
> 
> I propose the following changes for ARIA 1.1 to resolve the issues 
> surrounding action 1440. 
> 
> 1. Change the super class of the following roles to be the abstract 
> role section: alert, grid, list, log, status, and tabpanel. 
> 
> 2. Remove region as a superclass of article, leaving article with 
> document as its only superclass. 
> 
> 3. Change the "Name from" characteristic of abstract role section tobe 
"N/A".
> 
> 4. Change the definition of landmark as follows. 
> Current definition: 
> A type of region on a page to which the user may want quick access. 
> Content in such a region is different from that of other regions on 
> the page and relevant to a specific user purpose, such as 
> navigating, searching, perusing the primary content, etc. 
> Proposed new definition: 
> A region of a page to which the user may want quick access. The 
> region has either a type (role) or label or both that conveys its 
> relevantce to a specific purpose, such as navigating, searching, 
> perusing the primary content, etc. 
> 
> 5. Keep the current landmark role as abstract. Even though we had 
> general agreement that making it concrete may be a good idea, after 
> reconsidering, I think it will create significant problems. Primary 
reasons: 
> A. a generic landmark role that does not require a label will reduce
> usability given that the landmark will have neither a clear purpose 
> nor a label. We agreed that if landmark were concrete, it could not 
> require label in order to be exposed as a landmark. 
> B. Making landmark concrete does not benefit current UA and AT 
> implementations that support authors use of labeled regions as 
> generic landmark containers and could create confusion since a 
> labeled region and an unlabeled generic landmark would need to 
> receive equal treatment by UA and AT. 
> C. Given the above proposed definition of landmark and changes to 
> the ontology, we could eliminate the abstract landmark role without 
> losing anything. However, I think this would just create unnecessary 
work. 
> 
> 6. In the HTML 5 mapping, map HTML section to region only if region 
> has a label. 
> 
> 7. In the core AAM, only expose role region in the platform 
> accessibility APIs if the region has a label. (Note, this is only 
> for role region and not any of its subclasses). 
> 
> 8. Specify accessible name as required for role region and 
> explicitly override that requirement (set it false) for each of the 
> concrete landmark subclass roles. 
> 
> 9. Consider adding the following text to the prose for role region 
> (not sure this is necessary): 
> "Assistive technologies and user agents MAY provide landmark 
> navigation functionality for elements with role region and an 
> accessible name." 
> 
> Taken together, I believe this set of changes will: 
> 1. eliminate all the confusion described in the notes associated 
> with action 1440. 
> 2. Enable legacy implementations to continue working. 
> 3. Continue to give AT vendors the flexibility they have today in UX 
design. 
> 
> 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