RE: First draft of ARIA 1.1. "text" role

Stefan,

Stefan wrote:
> Can you please go ahead and tell FS that they should support aria-
> label (or labelledby, describedby) e.g. in
> <span aria-label=”Out of stock – That is  Critical” 
> style=”color:red”>Out of Stock</span>
> in ALL their modes (important!) according to the ARIA spec WITHOUT 
> having a role applied on the span or on the body?

First, which spec text tells the AT what to do with this construct?

Please, please, do not ask screen readers to render the label on a span in 
place of the span ... or on any similar static element, e.g., UL, LI, P, 
H, etc. This would be a disaster. When we made aria-label global, I do not 
think this was the intent. I am not aware of anything in the spec that 
would support it. Where do you find it?

BTW, if your only visual communication of the critical state is color, the 
app already fails WCAG.

If there is a shortcoming here, it is probably in HTML itself. There are 
no elements that have the symantics of warning, critical warning, error 
message, etc. We have elements for paragraph, note, blockquote, etc., but 
nothing with the semantics for which you are asking. Isn't that a gap in 
HTML?

Why not include a critical icon so the screen reader user can look for the 
graphic with "critical"? Then you kill 2 birds with one stone:
1. The requirement for a visual representation other than color.
2. Something easy to find with a screen reader.

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:   "Schnabel, Stefan" <stefan.schnabel@sap.com>
To:     Marco Zehe <mzehe@mozilla.com>, "lisa.seeman" 
<lisa.seeman@zoho.com>, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com>, 
Cc:     Cynthia Shelly <cyns@microsoft.com>, "White, Jason J" 
<jjwhite@ets.org>, Fred Esch/Arlington/IBM@IBMUS, Matthew 
King/Fishkill/IBM@IBMUS, "Steve Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>, 
Joanmarie Diggs <jdiggs@igalia.com>, W3C WAI Protocols & Formats 
<public-pfwg@w3.org>
Date:   11/12/2014 01:04 AM
Subject:        RE: First draft of ARIA 1.1. "text" role



Hi Marco,
 
I’m in the mood for some trolling since I don’t understand sometimes 
implementation logic behind.
 
Can you please go ahead and tell FS that they should support aria-label 
(or labelledby, describedby) e.g. in
 
<span aria-label=”Out of stock – That is  Critical” style=”color:red”>Out 
of Stock</span>
 
in ALL their modes (important!) according to the ARIA spec WITHOUT having 
a role applied on the span or on the body?
 
If they refuse, having
 
<span role=”text” aria-label=”Out of stock – That is  Critical” 
style=”color:red”>Out of Stock</span>
 
will make things clearer for the screen readers that there is more than 
just plain text .. namely ARIA-attributed text.
 
Best Regards
Stefan
 
From: Marco Zehe [mailto:mzehe@mozilla.com] 
Sent: Mittwoch, 12. November 2014 09:24
To: lisa.seeman; James Craig
Cc: Cynthia Shelly; White, Jason J; Fred Esch; Matthew King; Steve 
Faulkner; Joanmarie Diggs; W3C WAI Protocols & Formats
Subject: Re: First draft of ARIA 1.1. "text" role
 
+1000 to that, Lisa! Given the history of the web, I think it is safe to 
assume that everything that is nothing else is text, and that text does 
not need its own role. None of the examples I have seen in this thread 
convinced me that this is either necessary nor in any way helpful.

Marco

On 12.11.2014 07:48, lisa.seeman wrote:
My 2 cents 
Each new role we introduce will create a learning curve for authors, many 
of whom will initially apply it incorrectly, killing the user experience, 
until an accessibility consultant tells them how to use it correctly. 
(Assuming the consultant is not also using it inappropriately - this is 
not to be taken for a given.) I say this based on a lot of personal 
experience.
 
If we do not need a new role we should not create it.
 
 
All the best

Lisa Seeman

Athena ICT Accessibility Projects 
LinkedIn, Twitter

 

---- On Wed, 12 Nov 2014 05:15:29 +0200 James Craig<jcraig@apple.com> 
wrote ---- 

> On Nov 11, 2014, at 5:41 PM, Cynthia Shelly <cyns@microsoft.com> wrote: 
> 
> I wonder if it might make more sense to change the definition of 
presentation or none to cover this scenario 
> 
> <p>I <img src="heart.gif" alt="love" role="none"> New York.</p> 
> 
> to read "I love New York" instead of "I New York" 

As Matt alluded, the ARIA 1.0 "presentation" role ("none" is a 1.1 synonym 
role of "presentation") does not expose any attribute or role semantics, 
so this would not expose the text alternative. 

> The glyph scenario is different, because it is text, and is often read 
as a single character. 

I don't think it'd always be limited to a single character. 

> But, do we need a role for that? Would this work instead? 
> 
> <p>I <span aria-label="love">♥</span> New York.</p> 

The role of the span is ambiguous here. Some platforms don't expose the 
span at all, preferring to flatten the selection string, so there is no 
element on which to hang the label. (Though that might just be an 
implementation detail.) 

James