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

Hi James,

 

1)      Feedback (anecdotal but legitimate) supplied to this list by Leonie suggests this *is* a problem (albeit not a critical one). FWIW, I have also been fostering a discussion internally at Deque about this, and I have received similar feedback from multiple daily screen-reader users on our team, confirming that this introduces confusion – in fact I have heard more than once that given the choice between just being told there is a heading, versus being told a heading level (even if incorrect) would be the preferred outcome, so…



2)      While I can appreciate the concern over ‘bloat’, I am also inclined to think that adding good features to aria isn’t bloat, it’s a reflection of a need, and here one that seems to truly exist.



3)      You wrote: “Authors can already define heading levels a number of ways… Or undefined (no attribute) when the level is unknown or irrelevant.” – but this is exactly the problem. We are hearing (directly, from affect users) that “irrelevant” is a non-starter, that the heading level *IS* relevant (and in a real surprise to me) even if “wrong” is still better than no level information at all, and the preferred response (which also suggests that VO’s current resolution to this issue is also the less-preferred solution, according to users). I will again note that Leonie’s feedback suggests that this is not really a “preferred” solution at all, but instead the lesser of two flawed options currently on offer.

 

While we do not have unanimity around the idea, there does seem to be some desire and interest in introducing reserved-values (beyond integers) for this attribute – I think Jon’s suggestion of “auto” or “sub-section”, coupled with explicit numbering, is an interesting and workable pattern, and I frankly don’t think it would be “bloat”, nor that confusing for authors moving forward. The real question is, can we (will we?) get support for this idea from implementers? (I think another suggestion – setting a default enumerated value when the level is undeclared – could also be workable, although it still feels wrong to me)

 

Barring that, but recognizing the problem that exists for authors today, I think the solution should be (and related to the actual subject line) that aria-level be a “required property”, as it appears that the affected user-base prefers a level heading, even if incorrect. (And yes, for those following closely, my mind has been changed from my initial position – affected users have made the case)

 

Thoughts? Feedback from other implementers?

 

Cheers!

 

JF

 

 

 

From: James Craig [mailto:jcraig@apple.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2015 2:14 AM
To: WAI Protocols & Formats
Subject: 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 <mailto: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" < <mailto:john.foliot@deque.com> john.foliot@deque.com>
To: "'James Craig'" < <mailto:jcraig@apple.com> jcraig@apple.com>, "'Joseph Scheuhammer'" < <mailto:clown@alum.mit.edu> clown@alum.mit.edu>
Cc: "'WAI Protocols & Formats'" < <mailto:public-pfwg@w3.org> public-pfwg@w3.org>, "'Dominic Mazzoni'" < <mailto:dmazzoni@google.com> dmazzoni@google.com>, "'Alexander Surkov'" < <mailto:surkov.alexander@gmail.com> surkov.alexander@gmail.com>, "'David Bolter'" < <mailto:dbolter@mozilla.com> dbolter@mozilla.com>, "'Cynthia Shelly'" < <mailto:cyns@microsoft.com> 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 < <mailto:clown@alum.mit.edu> 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 -
> >
>