RE: aria-hidden (was RE: 48-Hour Call for Consensus (CfC); Publish 1 ARIA FPWD & 2 ARIA Heartbeats)

There are certainly use cases for aria-hidden, yes.
But what troubles me is 
1. that aria-hidden="false" is not the same as removeing aria-hidden (as
indicated in the text that I quoted).
2. That aria-hidden="false" when applied on a note overrides any hiding of
that node's descendants.

Consider again:
<code>
<div role="tabpanel" id="tab2" aria-hidden="false">
...
<input type="hidden" value="default value">
<a aria-expanded="false">account history</a>
<div style="display: none;">
... some info
</div> -- end of account history tab that is hidden until expanded
</div> -- end of tab
</code>

In this example,if you remove aria-hidden="false" from the tabpanel tag, you
will see all info except the hidden input and the account info panel, which
is hidden until user expands it.

If you set aria-hidden="false" you will see the input panel and the account
info content, because aria-hidden="false" on the parent container dictates
that.
I have already seen this cause bugs in webpages for large corporations and
developers are mystified by this situation.
It would be logical for me, as a web developer, to say "hey, this aria
hidden attribute, cool, I will use it and just set it to false when content
is visible, right", it is less work than removing it.
The consequences are totally not obvious.
If you want all descendants of an element to be visible to assistive
technologies, no matter their display settings, that requires an attribute
that is affirmative and clear, such as "aria-hiddn="offScreen".
Or aria-visible="true".
The beauty of ARIA is often that you can tie it with CSS via selectors and
it makes it easier to control the display of dynamic content to all users.
Obviously aria-hidden="false" and display: block in this case is not the
same, one unhindes all the descendants, the other just makes the text
visible and leaves display settings of descendants alone.

If we get into a situation where ARIA has to be managed separately from CSS,
developers will get confused, we will see a lot of errors creep into ARIA
use, and ultimately it will become a problem rather than a solution.

-----Original Message-----
From: White, Jason J [mailto:jjwhite@ets.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 3, 2014 3:05 PM
To: Birkir Gunnarsson; 'Bryan Garaventa'; janina@rednote.net; 'W3C WAI
Protocols & Formats'
Subject: aria-hidden (was RE: 48-Hour Call for Consensus (CfC); Publish 1
ARIA FPWD & 2 ARIA Heartbeats)



>-----Original Message-----
>From: Birkir Gunnarsson [mailto:birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com]
>As a larger, and separate, problem, I think aria-hidden="false" should 
>not override CSS display settings. If there is an absolute need for 
>content to remain visible to assistive technologies whilst being 
>removed with CSS, there should be a more explicit attribute for 
>aria-hidden, such as aria-hidden="visible".
>But I will post that as a separate thread.

There is a very real need to be able to hide content from the visual
presentation while making it available to assistive technologies. Currently,
aria-hidden is the best available mechanism for this. I disagree with any
suggestion that CSS properties should override aria-hidden. Rather, I think
ARIA should be the final determinant of what does and does not appear in the
accessibility tree corresponding to a document, irrespective of style
properties.


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Received on Thursday, 4 December 2014 14:21:09 UTC