Idea: using ARIA to identify interactive controls for accessibility features

This brief note describes the idea that I put forward in the discussion today of the details element.

One could define a new property - call it aria-accessibilitycontrol that could be set on certain elements, e.g., those with button, checkbox, radio or option roles. It would be a boolean property which, if true, identifies the widget as controlling an accessibility feature. Alternatively, it could be an idref property that refers to the element to which the accessibility option applies, e.g., IMG, VIDEO, thereby setting up an explicit association. (Having an explicit association between elements and their extended descriptions or alternatives is among the requirements articulated by the digital publishing community.)

A details element used to provide descriptions or other alternatives to media objects could have this property. A screen reader could inform the user or provide a command to jump to such controls.

A button or check box that enables/disables captions in a custom media player would be another good application of this idea.

A further application would be a dialog containing a significant number of options, some of which are accessibility-related. The latter could be flagged accordingly with this property, or a group or radiogroup enclosing them could be so annotated.

How useful would this feature be? I don’t know, which is why I am advancing it as an idea, not as a proposal for a new ARIA property..


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Received on Thursday, 20 August 2015 19:44:46 UTC