Re: @inert and @aria-inert for disambiguating modal states

I see the need for a developer to state whether their dialogs are modal 
or not.

In the Modal case, for AT which uses a virtual buffer model, it would 
allow the AT to prevent the user from interacting with the base page 
using the virtual buffer when a modal dialog is open. If the dialog is 
not modal then AT should allow interaction with the base page.

JAWS does this today for the dialog role but IMO this is not correct 
because dialogs do not have to be modal.

I don't care how this problem is solved. aria-inert seems like one 
possible solution, but alternatively there could be an aria-modal 
property on the dialog role - or even a new role entirely for modal dialogs.

Regards,
James

On 11/6/2014 10:08 AM, Dominic Mazzoni wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 10:01 AM, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com 
> <mailto:jcraig@apple.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Nov 5, 2014, at 11:17 AM, Richard Schwerdtfeger
>     <schwer@us.ibm.com <mailto:schwer@us.ibm.com>> wrote:
>
>     > Dominic, @inert is an indicator of state - like aria states and
>     properties. It does not have to do the actual function.
>
>     This is a false statement. @inert is useless if it does not
>     provide the function. By the same logic, I can see no possible way
>     that @aria-inert would be useful or even possible to implement.
>
>
> Exactly, I don't see any purpose in @aria-inert that reports to AT and 
> doesn't actually do anything. What is the AT supposed to do if events 
> fire on nodes that have aria-inert=true?
>

-- 
Regards, James

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