Steve,
Where do you want the use cases defined? In the bug trackers or some wiki?
Use Case #1: Accessibility Evaluation Tools
Accessibility evaluation tools like AInspector Sidebar for Firefox and FAE 2.0 that are based on the OpenAjax Accessibility Evaluation Library can use this API as part of the analysis of the web resources for accessibility information. Currently these tools must implement their own algorithms to compute the label and role values. The computed values can be compared to markup to identify coding errors when labeling information like aria-labelledby reference invalid or duplicate ids.
References:
OpenAjax Web Accessibility Evaluation Library
http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/Accessibility
Use Case #2: “SkipTo” Javascript Utility
“SkipTo” is a javascript utility to provide keyboard navigation to a list of headings and landmarks for use in navigating the structured content of a web page. The ability to search the DOM for role (e.g. heading, landmark) and get accessible names through computed label values would make this code immensely simpler (e.g. do not need to replicate code already in the browser for computing these values, similar to get computedStyle). I am currently working on updating this code to include HTML5 section elements with labels.
Reference:
https://github.com/paypal/skipto
Jon
From: Steve Faulkner [mailto:faulkner.steve@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 10:25 AM
To: HTMLWG WG
Cc: Alice Boxhall; David Bolter; Dominic Mazzoni; Richard Schwerdtfeger; Domenic Denicola; Alexander Surkov; W3C WAI Protocols & Formats; James Craig
Subject: use cases 'DOM needs a way to get element's computed ARIA role and computed label string'
Can people who are interested in getting this[1] stuff defined and implemented[2] provide use cases?
[1] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27294
[2] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/WToTEn4lveY
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Regards
SteveF