Re: ACTION-1442: Draft spec text for aria-current and aria-currentfor

With respect to currentfor, Alex writes:
> I guess it's helpful for navigation, if AT wants to move by currentable 
elements.

We already have that baked into ARIA with regions and structural widgets. 
I do not think we need a new concept here. I think we need only a very 
simple way of communicating that there is a visual indicator that this 
item in a set is displayed as the current item in the set. And perhaps, 
"current" may not be the best name. The definition of the set comes from 
context. If it is not apparent from the UI, then the property is probably 
being used inappropriately.

Should we consider aria-displayed? aria-showing? .... One thing I fear is 
that screen readers will simply say "current" and that in a particular 
context the word "current" does not carry meaning in a particular context 
for the end user.

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:   Alexander Surkov <surkov.alexander@gmail.com>
To:     Matthew King/Fishkill/IBM@IBMUS, 
Cc:     Léonie Watson <LWatson@paciellogroup.com>, "W3C WAI Protocols & 
Formats" <public-pfwg@w3.org>
Date:   11/06/2014 01:39 PM
Subject:        Re: ACTION-1442: Draft spec text for aria-current and 
aria-currentfor



I guess it's helpful for navigation, if AT wants to move by currentable 
elements.

On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 4:29 PM, Matthew King <mattking@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> If I understand the use cases… 
> aria-current is used when the scoping container is known, and 
aria-currentfor for when it must be manually determined. 

Why do we need to specify a scoping container? What would AT do with that 
information? 

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:        Léonie Watson <LWatson@PacielloGroup.com> 
To:        Matthew King/Fishkill/IBM@IBMUS, 
Cc:        <public-pfwg@w3.org> 
Date:        11/06/2014 01:18 PM 
Subject:        RE: ACTION-1442: Draft spec text for aria-current and 
aria-currentfor 




Matthew King wrote: 
“I am still not clear on the need for aria-currentfor.” 
  
If I understand the use cases… aria-current is used when the scoping 
container is known, and aria-currentfor for when it must be manually 
determined. 
  
“Is it necessary for there to be a navigation container in the ancestry? I 
have encountered use cases that would not necessarily have that. For 
instance, if the author is indicating current step in a list of steps, 
there might not be a nav element or navigation region in the ancestry. In 
this use case, the list of steps may be static, or they may be links or 
buttons that navigate to other steps. If they are static, they might not 
have a navigation container in their ancestry.” 
  
Yes, but we need a way to define the scope for those elements. This is the 
use case for aria-currentfor as I understand it. 
  
“Also, do you think it is necessary to so tightly constrain the elements 
to which it can be applied? We may want to consider making it global.” 
  
I think this will depend on how we scope the respective attributes. I 
think that allowing aria-current on all elements in the base markup would 
be problematic, especially if we decide not to constrain its scope. 
  
  
Léonie. 
  
-- 
Senior Accessibility Engineer, TPG 
@LeonieWatson @PacielloGroup