Re: ARIA guide authoring practices and assistive technology bugs (alert dialog)

Birkir,

According to the spec, you need this:

<div role=”alertdialog” aria-labelledby=”foo1” aria-describedby="foo2" 
instead of putting aria-describedby on the close button.

That is what I do in our apps, and it works with both JAWS and NVDA. JAWS 
even reads it correctly with insert+b.

I do not have teams put role="document" around foo2. That should not be 
necessary. And, the changes to the definition of role dialog we put in for 
ARIA 1.1 make that yet more clear.

I do agree that it could be beneficial for us to discuss AT buts that are 
directly related to the patterns we are working on as a group so AT 
vendors get consistent messaging. I don't see a problem with raising the 
discussions on the pf list.

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:   "Birkir Gunnarsson" <birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com>
To:     Matthew King/Fishkill/IBM@IBMUS, "'Bryan Garaventa'" 
<bryan.garaventa@ssbbartgroup.com>, 
Cc:     "'James Nurthen'" <james.nurthen@oracle.com>, <public-pfwg@w3.org>
Date:   12/07/2014 12:13 PM
Subject:        ARIA guide authoring practices and assistive technology 
bugs (alert dialog)



Greetings everyone
 
Matt/James, this might be an overload if sent to the whole list, would you 
propose that a smaller group of us discuss individual bugs?
I know it is unrelated to the specific agenda for last week, but I have 
been thoroughly writing and testing a simple alert dialog.
I am not sure if I can send the specific code yet, (in any case sending it 
to a mailing list is hardly the way to go), but thte skeleton is:
 
<code>
<button>some button that displays a dialog and moves focus to the “close” 
button inside the dialog container</button>
<div role=”alertdialog” aria-labelledby=”foo1”>
<h2 id=”foo1”>Warning</h2>
<p id=”foo2”>The message of the alert dialog</p>
<!-- this button receives focus when dialog is displayed à
<button id=”dialogclose”>Close</button>
</div>
</code>
 
Screen reader observations:
Jaws 16 with IE10 – Will not read the alert dialog text unless 
aria-describedby is used on the close button to connect it with the 
paragraph (<button aria-describedby=“foo2”>close</button>).
It reads label of dialog and the word “dialog”, then “close button” .. but 
not the text, unless aria-describedby is present.
Also Jaws will ignore targets of aria-describedby when its general 
verbosity level is set to “advanced”.
I know an issue has been filed for that, but Jaws 16 has not addressed 
this.
 
NVDA 2014.4 with FF33:
If the text of the dialog message (p with id=”foo2”> is assigned 
role=”document” (as recommended in the spec as I understand it), NVDA 
2014.4 will not read it, neither when the dialog is displayed, nor using 
aria-describedby = “foo2” on the close button.
The only way to see it is to force browse mode and use arrow keys to 
locate the message.
 
If role=”document is removed from paragraph with id=”foo2” , 
NVDA will read the alert message when dialog is displayed.
If aria-describedby=”foo2” is present on the close button, it will read 
the message, the close button, then the message again.
 
I have not studied the browsers accessibility API yet.
 
I propose that two a.t. vendor bugs be filed (given the outcome of 
inspecting the browser).
Jaws:
-        Should read content of alert dialog role automatically when focus 
is moved into it.
NVDA
-        Should not let role=”document” disassociate the message from 
role=”alertdialog” and aria-describedby.
 
If we plan to create a repository of bugs based around our own examples, 
we can add these to that when the time comes, and if the bug still exists.
I expect to file these on my own, but any kind of official filing or 
recording by the group may encourage vendors to get things fixed.
Thanks
-Birkir