Re: aria-level a required property for role="heading" or a supported property with an RFC SHOULD for authors

I'm not convinced this is solving a real problem. 

ARIA is already somewhat bloated. We should not be adding *any* new things there is a real need that can't be solved by an existing technology. Authors can already define heading levels a number of ways.

1. Explicitly in the @aria-level attribute.
2. Dynamically with JavaScript.
3. Or undefined (no attribute) when the level is unknown or irrelevant.

 Please leave @aria-level an integer; throwing keywords on it adds significant author confusion.

My vote is to leave @aria-level the way it is.

James



> On Jun 19, 2015, at 1:03 AM, Schnabel, Stefan <stefan.schnabel@sap.com> wrote:
> 
> I second the „computed level“ approach since this leaves the leveling info to the user agent (derived by structure), which is favorable always when the UI framework doesn’t know exactly about the heading nesting and for some reasons the page is assembled from various sources (meaning that there is no “human” page author setting actively the heading levels).
>  
> -      Stefan
>  
>  
> From: Gunderson, Jon R [mailto:jongund@illinois.edu <mailto:jongund@illinois.edu>] 
> Sent: Donnerstag, 18. Juni 2015 23:38
> To: Richard Schwerdtfeger; John Foliot
> Cc: 'Joseph Scheuhammer'; 'Cynthia Shelly'; 'David Bolter'; 'Dominic Mazzoni'; 'James Craig'; 'WAI Protocols & Formats'; 'Alexander Surkov'
> Subject: RE: aria-level a required property for role="heading" or a supported property with an RFC SHOULD for authors
>  
> Could there be a value that would indicate an automatically generate a computed level, for example:
>  
> aria-level=”auto” would mean use the heading level of the previous heading in document order
>  
> aria-level=”subsection” would mean use one heading level down from the previous heading in document order
>  
> Jon
>  
>  
> From: Richard Schwerdtfeger [mailto:schwer@us.ibm.com <mailto:schwer@us.ibm.com>] 
> Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 4:30 PM
> To: John Foliot
> Cc: 'Joseph Scheuhammer'; 'Cynthia Shelly'; 'David Bolter'; 'Dominic Mazzoni'; 'James Craig'; 'WAI Protocols & Formats'; 'Alexander Surkov'
> Subject: RE: aria-level a required property for role="heading" or a supported property with an RFC SHOULD for authors
>  
> Yes, but lack of a level provides no level context and it does not align well with an HTML document whose native elements ALL provide a level. The question is not what the default behavior is when you leave it off but rather what we should be requiring authors to do. I think Mac does the best you can do in the absence of a level. 
> 
> 
> Rich Schwerdtfeger
> 
> "John Foliot" ---06/18/2015 04:19:55 PM---+1, I have previously suggested that this is the better response (holy cow James, we're going 2 for
> 
> From: "John Foliot" <john.foliot@deque.com <mailto:john.foliot@deque.com>>
> To: "'James Craig'" <jcraig@apple.com <mailto:jcraig@apple.com>>, "'Joseph Scheuhammer'" <clown@alum.mit.edu <mailto:clown@alum.mit.edu>>
> Cc: "'WAI Protocols & Formats'" <public-pfwg@w3.org <mailto:public-pfwg@w3.org>>, "'Dominic Mazzoni'" <dmazzoni@google.com <mailto:dmazzoni@google.com>>, "'Alexander Surkov'" <surkov.alexander@gmail.com <mailto:surkov.alexander@gmail.com>>, "'David Bolter'" <dbolter@mozilla.com <mailto:dbolter@mozilla.com>>, "'Cynthia Shelly'" <cyns@microsoft.com <mailto:cyns@microsoft.com>>
> Date: 06/18/2015 04:19 PM
> Subject: RE: aria-level a required property for role="heading" or a supported property  with an RFC SHOULD for authors
> 
> 
> 
> 
> +1, I have previously suggested that this is the better response (holy cow
> James, we're going 2 for 2 :-) ). 
> 
> Leonie did some very quick real-time testing during our call, and (she will
> correct me if I am wrong) she noted that in Firefox with NVDA (?) when the
> level was not specified, it defaulted to "level 2" (which I think is a wrong
> decision). Not sure where that decision is happening however, but suspect
> it's in the screen reader.
> 
> JF
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: James Craig [mailto:jcraig@apple.com <mailto:jcraig@apple.com>]
> > Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 2:14 PM
> > To: Joseph Scheuhammer
> > Cc: WAI Protocols & Formats; Dominic Mazzoni; Alexander Surkov; David
> Bolter;
> > Cynthia Shelly
> > Subject: Re: aria-level a required property for role="heading" or a
> supported
> > property with an RFC SHOULD for authors
> > 
> > VoiceOver used to speak "Heading Level 0, text content" but we fixed that
> a few
> > years ago. It now speaks "Heading, text content"
> > 
> > James
> > 
> > > On Jun 18, 2015, at 2:04 PM, Joseph Scheuhammer <clown@alum.mit.edu <mailto:clown@alum.mit.edu>>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > On 2015-06-18 3:06 PM, Bryan Garaventa wrote:
> > >> Just to simplify my view, if heading levels are optional, ATs and
> browsers will
> > never provide consistent UIs, because they will always do something
> different by
> > guessing.
> > >
> > > Tangent:  What do Chrome, FF, IE, and Safari, do, in fact, when faced
> with
> > "heading", but no aria-level?  For example,
> > >
> > > <div role="heading>...</div>
> > >
> > > How is the level property mapped?
> > >
> > > --
> > > ;;;;joseph.
> > >
> > > 'Array(16).join("wat" - 1) + " Batman!"'
> > >           - G. Bernhardt -
> > >
> > 
>